Hands-on with the Note 8, Android Oreo, and Verizon's new unlimited data plans

This week on The Verge, Dieter was able to get his hands on the new Galaxy Note 8. So on The Vergecast, Nilay, Dieter, and Paul go over the first impressions of Samsung’s latest product and what the pricing will mean for future smartphones. Next up, Loren Grush returns to the show to talk about the second episode of Space Craft, as well as her experience seeing the eclipse this week in Nashville. There’s a lot more in between, like Android Oreo’s name announcement, Verizon’s new unlimited data plans, and some new smart speakers on the horizon, so listen to it all and you’ll get it all. 02:43 - Note 8 specs and features 17:06 - Apple reportedly planning $999 price for new iPhone 26:36 - How I outran clouds to get the perfect eclipse photo with Loren Grush 34:12 - Space Craft episode two with Loren Grush 44:34 - Android O is now officially Android Oreo 47:40 - Google may take on the Echo Dot with a mini Google Home 51:26 - Samsung confirms it’s working on a smart speaker 52:13 - Paul revisits Intel’s new chip announcements 57:41 - Verizon’s good unlimited data plan is now three bad unlimited plans 1:09:38 - Paul’s weekly segment “YotaPhone 3; still Yota-ing” 1:12:07 - Apple TV is losing badly to Roku and Amazon in the living room, survey finds 1:13:28 - iOS 11 Safari will turn Google AMP links back into regular ones when sharing 1:19:34 - Nikon’s new D850 has 45.7 megapixels and enough features to tempt Canon shooters 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 show brought to you by not Jason Bourne, but whoever Jeremy Renner was in that other movie.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  Jackson Bourne.

• 0:15Nilay Patel?

  The flagship podcast of theverge.com. I don't, I don't know why we started with the Bourne supremacy, but here we are. Anyhow.

• 0:21Speaker 02

  How come they haven't made a, they should make one where he like converts and they can call it Jason Bourne again.

• 0:28Nilay Patel?

  I don't know if we're ready for like an evangelical Christian action movie. Do they have any of those, Paul?

• 0:32Speaker 01

  Uh, Left Behind is kind of an action movie. Like the Kirk Cameron Left Behind?

• 0:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah, but it's not like really an action movie. Alright, I mean, I can't say I like really studiously watched Left Behind films. Anyhow, my point here today is not whether or not we're ascending to a higher moral plane. It's that Paul is here.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 0:51Nilay Patel?

  Dieter is here.

• 0:51Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 0:52Nilay Patel?

  I'm here. I'm Neil. I'm your friend, your pal, and we have a whole bunch of news to talk about. We got a packed show here. We got new phones, all kinds of phone news. Google named it Oreo, which was not a surprise to literally anyone, regardless of Google's best efforts. We got a segment with Lauren Grush coming up, talking about spacecraft. Packed show, kind of a classic vibe because it's like phone season again.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Here's the sad part, though. I can't read the show notes. Because I'm blind from looking at the sun.

• 1:24Nilay Patel?

  It happened. Yeah, the eclipse happened.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  Worth it.

• 1:27Nilay Patel?

  Paul and I watched it together. And he, I will tell you confidently, he kind of lifted the sun a little bit.

• 1:33Speaker 01

  It's a good time.

• 1:34Nilay Patel?

  I had the glasses, I kept operating them. He's like, no, no, no. I'm gonna look.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  I wanted to see, I wanted to see it for real.

• 1:40Nilay Patel?

  You know, we're about tech and culture. The sun, I believe, the oldest technology in the universe. That's a fact.

• 1:49Nilay Patel?

  Sure, everyone wants to kind of look at the sun. We were out, we went out, we were standing on the Veterans Memorial here in Financial District, like a big stair-steppy, grassy thing. Lots of people had glasses, all the suits were out in Foddy. Everyone just kind of kept on furtively glancing at the sun. I've never, I've never seen anything like that.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  Well, no, the, I mean, the key thing in the failure of the user interface of the glasses is that... It's apparently a human instinct. You can look at anything when you're putting glasses on, but when you take glasses off, you look exactly at the thing. Because think about it, like, you know, like, oh, I just realized I'm looking through sunglasses. Let me pull those down.

• 2:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  And so every time someone would take off their glasses, like, ah!

• 2:35Nilay Patel?

  All right. Speaking of large, powerful, bright objects.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:40Nilay Patel?

  Dieter.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:41Nilay Patel?

  I just went for it, man. Just went for it. The Note 8 came out this week.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:46Nilay Patel?

  Yesterday, actually, in terms of when we were recording. Dieter, you did the hands-on, you've played with it, tell us everything.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  I have. Uh, it is a big, giant note.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  The Note 7 before it, uh, started causing explosions, and maybe even the Note 5 before, like, people started freaking out because, oh my god, is it a note if it doesn't have a removable battery? Um, is it too much like the Galaxy S line? And, yeah, the Note 8 feels like a slightly flatter, slightly bigger, uh, Galaxy S8 Plus. Uh, but, you know, it's good, it's fine. It, uh, it has a couple new stylus tricks that I like.

• 3:23Nilay Patel?

  What are the stylus tricks?

• 3:24Speaker 02

  So, okay. The first stylus trick, uh, is one that's obvious and should have been there on the Note 7, which is when you pull the stylus out to take notes on the lock screen. You pull, when you pull the stylus out with the phone locked, it just gives you a black screen, you can take notes. They added a new page button, so you can take up to 100 pages of notes.

• 3:40Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  I didn't even know, know the Note did that. That seems actually convenient.

• 3:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Yeah. No, they aren't really good at the stylus stuff.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  Shut that thing down.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  You just start writing on the screen.

• 3:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  The other stylus, I mean, there's a couple, like, you could, like, highlight text with it and, like, translate. That doesn't really feel like a stylus feature to me, it's just a feature, but whatever. Um, the cool thing is that you can draw a message, right? Like, draw a smiley face and a heart, and then, when you save it, it saves the GIF recording of you drawing the smiley face and the heart, and then you can send that playback to somebody. Uh, I like it because it's, like, it's not proprietary. You just, you draw this thing and then you stick it in the messaging app you actually use, or you stick it on Twitter. Or whatever. It's not iMessage doodles. Everybody can see it, right? So that's that. I guess the bigger innovation, the bigger change is they also went dual camera. They managed to not have a big camera bump doing it.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  And there's like two different ways to do a cameras now. Well, actually three. So there's what Essential and I think Huawei have done, which is one's black and white and one is color. There's what Apple does and what Samsung has done, which is like one is normal and one is telephoto. And then there's one that LG has done where one is like super wide and one is normal. So Samsung's big thing is they're like, look, we put optical image stabilization on both lenses. And so then it'll be less shaky. Plus you can adjust the blur in the camera app, not just in post-production. So you put those two things together, that's ostensibly better. But I don't know. I, we need to test it and review it.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  Apparently, so you have to turn on live focus. That's what it's called. And then if you leave the camera app and come back, it's still there. It's still on by default. But if the camera app closes or you restart the phone, then you have to toggle it back on again.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  Which I don't like. I feel like if it's not the default, then what's the point? It's like kind of a chicken move to like, make it like a weird mode for the camera. Is that because it takes more battery or something? Well, it takes more battery, but also live photo, I think has an, I think it's in live photo has an option where it'll, it will save both the wide angle and the telephoto. So it actually saves like three images, the combined image that you can adjust the blur on, the telephoto image and the wide angle image. So if you leave it on, you know, your image goes from, you know, I don't know, a meg or two to like 15 megs. Cause it's just saving just a ton of data. Wow. So that's probably why it's not like the default. Cause I think the US version ships with 64 gigs of storage.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  It's expandable, but like you could start eating that up pretty quickly. But yeah, I mean, it's just, you know, do you like big phones? The note is like the quintessential, the OG big phone.

• 6:34Nilay Patel?

  Is it bigger than the iPhone, the plus-size iPhones?

• 6:37Speaker 02

  It's, I didn't have a plus-size iPhone there to hold it up next to. I'd have to do the online tool to measure it. It doesn't feel bigger than the plus-size iPhones.

• 6:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's what Dan said to me, too.

• 6:48Speaker 02

  The problem, I can't use the plus-size iPhones anymore. I could barely use the Pixel XL anymore. After having used the Galaxy S8 and the Essential Phone, any phones that like have those big giant bezels on the top and the bottom just feel stupid. Just dumb, dumb, dumb.

• 7:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  Dopey, stupid. And so it feels smaller. It might not technically be smaller, but the screen is huge. Samsung was very careful to tell us that the curve on the left and the right was less pronounced than it is on the S8 because then you have more space to write with the stylus.

• 7:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's almost like curving the edges of the screen is not great. They keep producing those curves. Like the first, remember it was like the S6 edge was like super curved and they're like, it's a sideways screen with features. And now they're just like, we curved it even less this time.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. They did a new multitasking thing, which is maybe interesting. Do you guys ever use split screen on your phones, ever?

• 7:48Nilay Patel?

  I want to. That's my answer.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, everybody wants to, nobody does.

• 7:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  I've done it a couple of times. So what Samsung has done is you can, when you have two apps open, you can save that dual app combo, like in your launcher, in the like swipe-in quick launch thing. And you can either just launch Chrome or launch, you know, Messenger or whatever. Or you can like hit the dual app icons and it'll launch them together all the time. Or like whenever you hit that, that combo. So that's kind of neat.

• 8:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, I guess as the screen is figuring bigger, you gotta figure out ways to layer those windows.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:23Nilay Patel?

  But yeah, it's one of those things that I want to do and never actually do. But I don't know, maybe I'll get a note. Maybe I get a note, I'll start doing like two apps at a time.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  That Bixby button.

• 8:33Nilay Patel?

  Cause.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  Use the Bixby button.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  Bixby's gonna support Spotify. How, how one hand usable is this phone? Like, I, I, I don't like big phones at all, and I don't, I, I basically have no fine motor controls in my hand, so I can't use a stylus. So the note is just.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  I'm just kind of like a clumsy person.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  The note is useless to me, but I'm still curious.

• 8:59Nilay Patel?

  Don't think the note's for you then, friend. Just, just gotta put that out there. It's not really a one-handed phone. It, uh, it's not for you.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:07Nilay Patel?

  Sorry.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 9:08Nilay Patel?

  Uh, it's got six gigs of RAM. I don't know. Sorry, that's a RAM spec to just throw out there.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  Hey, we're all about specs.

• 9:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Just playing, playing Paul's drum. That video didn't get made from last week.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  No, I'm working on it.

• 9:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, where's that video? Where's the spec down?

• 9:23Speaker 01

  It's in the works.

• 9:24Nilay Patel?

  I will tell the listener that I definitely ruined a meeting this week as Paul was talking about this video by opening GarageBand and just playing keyboard drums through the middle of the meeting. I don't know why anybody invites me to meetings in this organization.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  That's right. Uh. Still like you, Neil.

• 9:39Nilay Patel?

  I'm doing everything I can to not go, and when I go, I'm disruptive. You should just not invite me. That's great. Uh, and yet.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 9:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's, that's my plan. It's my secret plan to not be a good boss.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  I think the note is like, it's like you saying you want to multitask with it. Like, that's kind of the thing. Like, I think most people don't actually, they'll be just, if they want a big phone, they'll be just fine with something like an SA Plus or an Essential Phone or a Pixel XL or an iPhone, uh, Plus. Um, but there's something about the note that's like, I am the most powerful thing you can get. Bam, I've got all the RAM, I've got blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That is compelling.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  Does it, it's got a removable storage slot? I mean, that's like the main thing that I think, I think of in that.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  I mean, it's, it's supposed to be the spec monster.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  Waterproof and so is the stylus.

• 10:27Nilay Patel?

  That's great. I love that. Just right in the pool.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  So I, I remember, like, remember when 17-inch laptops were kind of a new thing? And it was this hyper-premium concept? And then. Companies realized that $400 17-inch laptops were really where it's at. Like, where's the $400 note?

• 10:47Nilay Patel?

  They made that. Oh, they exist. It's called the Galaxy Mega. Remember that thing?

• 10:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:51Nilay Patel?

  They, like, Samsung made-

• 10:53Speaker 02

  There's a whole bunch of them in China. Yeah.

• 10:54Nilay Patel?

  I don't know if, I don't, I could not tell you the vast scope of Samsung's product line, but they have a bunch of, like, mid-low-end phones with huge screens.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  No, but with the stylus. Because I think one of the important things is, um, older people who do not like typing on virtual keyboards would be more comfortable typing with a stylus or writing their notes.

• 11:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  It's a theory.

• 11:18Nilay Patel?

  It's a theory, yeah.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  Again, not my demographic.

• 11:20Nilay Patel?

  I think those people are better served by the voice typing feature.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  That is also a thing that I see with the old people.

• 11:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:27Speaker 02

  The old people.

• 11:28Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna be those people someday, screaming at our phones.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  I mean, I'm that person right now. I have to tell you guys.

• 11:34Nilay Patel?

  It's true. I get a lot of texts from Neider that are very obviously dictated.

• 11:39Speaker 02

  We haven't talked about, uh, the most important thing.

• 11:41Nilay Patel?

  Which is that it costs a shedload of money.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  I'm gonna, no, no, that's, that's the second most important thing. Um, I'm gonna build a hill-

• 11:47Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  For Nilay to die on, and it's gonna have a headphone jack in it.

• 11:52Nilay Patel?

  You know, I said last week, I don't want to be the face of this movement, and then I got a lot of tweets that are like, "Sorry, you've dug your own grave." Samsung, and, uh, somebody tweeted me, um, Samsung made a big deal that it still has a headphone jack, which, by the way, it can because it's huge. It's like all of Apple's arguments about saving space, whatnot. Uh, that's Essential's argument too. We saw Andy Rubin at Code. He's like, "We gotta make the phone smaller. This is the thing we get rid of to make the phone smaller." Well, if you make the world's biggest phone, you have some extra space, so they have it in there.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  Right.

• 12:22Nilay Patel?

  But Samsung made a big deal out of it, and I know, I understand completely why they would. Because if you have a thing that people still want, and they're obviously annoyed by it, your phone has a differentiating feature and you have it. And every Android phone is losing it. So now you've got the one Android phone that has this.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  That has it.

• 12:42Nilay Patel?

  And you're the one in the store and you're like, you can get this other phone that you probably haven't heard of. LG, what's that? Or you can get this tried and true Samsung that everyone's heard of and it's got the port you want. Like they're just gonna have it forever. Until, until something in the Android ecosystem threatens Samsung. They, they have no reason not to just keep playing the game they're playing. Cause their hardware is really nice. And they figure out how to make the phone small and have no like bezels with a headphone jack and waterproof.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:09Nilay Patel?

  You might even say they out engineered Apple in terms of packaging. It's, it's just an idea that they have. But yes, I, look, I don't love the headphone jack. Like I used AirPods yesterday. It was great.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 13:21Nilay Patel?

  Wonderful experience. I'm just saying.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  It's a, I, I'm look, I was looking into, um, the Apple dongle.

• 13:30Nilay Patel?

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Which I hadn't been able to buy on Amazon, but now it seems to be available on Amazon. But I looked to see how much it would be on apple.com.

• 13:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  It's, it's hard to find there. The Apple official dongle. Has 1.5 stars out of 5 on Apple's official store.

• 13:49Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 13:49Speaker 01

  It's like a forum for people editorializing why it's a bad idea. And also talking about how the volume level that they get from the dongle, they don't think is equivalent to the actual, uh, traditional phone's headphone jack.

• 14:02Nilay Patel?

  Wow. Sounds like I assigned you another story just now.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Well, I already, I already, I already wrote it.

• 14:09Nilay Patel?

  Did you?

• 14:09Speaker 01

  I just didn't put it up yet.

• 14:10Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I see. No, a dog ate it.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  A dog, a dog ate my story.

• 14:17Nilay Patel?

  That's wild. I mean, look, it's whatever. I'm just saying they created a problem. They sell $129 solution to that problem. It is excellent business.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  Samsung should be paying Apple to keep not having a headphone jack.

• 14:29Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I don't think, I don't think anyone in the universe is gonna switch from iOS to Android over headphone jack. I, like, whatever. It's a good ecosystem. You're locked into it. They sell a bunch of great products. But I just, it's annoying and I, I think we should just be aware of the fact that it's annoying. That's it. That's my hill. My hill is entitled.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:48Nilay Patel?

  Please just be aware that this is annoying and stop lying to everyone.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  Would you say it's, uh, consumer housing?

• 14:54Nilay Patel?

  It's not a well titled hill. Like it's, it's, it's one of those weird Welsh hills with like endless long names.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  Endless what?

• 15:04Speaker 02

  Does anyone have a hill in Wales they can say? You know, like Welsh names are like really long. You know what I'm talking about?

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Welsh names or Welsh hills?

• 15:12Speaker 02

  Well, both. Names.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  The hills that are named.

• 15:15Speaker 02

  Names is the big Venn diagram of things.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  What do names have to do with hills? I seriously have no idea.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  Cause my hill is called.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Oh, cause the name of the hill.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  It's annoying and it's stopping everyone, which is a very long name.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  And I think in Wales, they would accept the length of that name.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  But you're not talking about the geography or the type of hills that.

• 15:34Speaker 02

  No, I'm talking about Welsh naming conventions.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  Cause I'm just trying to visualize the hill. I'm thinking of like a telly tug. It's like green.

• 15:42Speaker 02

  Imagine a hill with a giant headphone jack in it and Neelai is dead, lying on top of it. And it has a really long nail.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  You know those hills and mini golf courses where they're like total assholes and they put the hole right at the top of like a perfect.

• 15:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Convex.

• 15:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know what I'm talking about?

• 16:00Speaker 02

  What am I talking about? By the way, you can just start, you can just start typing the word long Welsh and you just get lists of long Welsh names. Anyway.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  Nine hundred ish.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  Dollars.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, letters. Nine thirty, nine sixty, nine twenty, fourteen forty seven a month for a thousand months. Like too many pricings, but you can just buy the damn thing unlocked straight from Samsung, which is awesome. So you don't get a bunch of carrier crap, but uh, I saw way more feelings about the price than I expected.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  It's expensive. It's a thousand dollars.

• 16:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. But you know what? You know what you can get for 500 bucks? A laptop. You know what you can get for 2000 bucks? A laptop. You can choose whether you want to spend the money for the more expensive laptop or not.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  Especially.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  The big question is.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  It's almost certainly a primary computing device, right?

• 16:48Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah. Is there enough differentiation between a $500 phone and a thousand dollar phone? That's the whole question. It's like, I don't get mad that it exists. I just like, you have to investigate whether the speed, the multitasking, the cameras, you know, the waterproofing, the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That adds up to that much value to you.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  I've been thinking a lot about this and, and I, I haven't figured out how to say it yet, but there's something, it, it does seem like an unrealistic situation that forever that there's going to be this maximum price of like 7.99 and no phone will ever be more than 7.99. You know, I'm thinking of the iPhone being nine ninety-nine and how I feel about that. I don't feel great about it because there's something really cool about the fact that anybody who is willing to sacrifice enough to get to that point where they put maybe two hundred dollars on the table and then they got the rest of the phone by paying it with the monthly contract or whatever. There was just like this one bar and if you hopped over that bar, you had the greatest phone on the planet.

• 17:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  Outside of your storage size.

• 17:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  And now you'll have haves and have nots, just like everything in the world.

• 17:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  So it makes sense that there will be a thousand dollar phone. I would love to see what a two thousand dollar phone would look like, that not, not just like a fashion brand.

• 18:09Nilay Patel?

  Lamborghini phone.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, not, not that, not crocodile skin. But just, you know, what would the ultimate phone look like? And that maybe we're entering into that phase of smartphones, but we, we lived in a time where everybody had, not everybody, a very large number of people all had the best phone.

• 18:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I think I get it with the, it's weird to put it in the context of Apple because Apple's over a month away, presumably sometime in September, they'll put out iPhones. So it's weird to put it in the context without us knowing, although that phone has leaked so thoroughly, I feel like.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  Well, and recently the New York Times seemed pretty confident, nine ninety-nine.

• 18:52Nilay Patel?

  So it's like, you know, we're putting in a somewhat speculative context, but I, I get what you're saying, but at the same time, there was a cheaper iPhone. There's always been a second iPhone, like storage sizes and you could buy last year's model.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, but like.

• 19:07Nilay Patel?

  Last year's model always sells well.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  If I bought a car, I would at best get like a forty thousand dollar car. That's actually way more than I could afford, but let's assume, right? But there's a really rich person.

• 19:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Who can get like, you know, a billion dollar car. I don't know how much cars go.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  But if I walk down the street and I'm like, you know, I'm sweating because I don't own a car and a guy who valet parked his Lamborghini is eating in a nice restaurant, I got just as good of a phone as him.

• 19:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  You know, everything about his life is superior. He's got, he eats better, drives a better car, and he's got nicer clothes and all those things for him. Well, I've got heart and the same phone as him.

• 19:52Nilay Patel?

  I think what the listener should know is that Paul frequently spotted in New York walking up to fancy people just screaming, "I've got the same phone as you."

• 19:58Speaker 01

  That's right. They gotta know.

• 20:02Nilay Patel?

  Uh, yeah, I'm with you. Like, I'm excited to see what like a really high-end phone looks like. I'm excited to see what it can do. I think the, you know, there's all the arguments about like Apple, particularly at scale, they have to price it higher so they can make fewer of the thing and get these components. I think John Gruber's been on that trip for a while. I, more cynically, just to like present this viewpoint, I'm not sure how much I believe it, like, I think they have to make their phones more exciting, right? Like, in a, in a serious way, like, the current design of the iPhone, which dates back to the 6, I don't think it's ever been beautiful. I, I think in my initial review of the iPhone 6 Plus, which is three years ago now, I was like, "This thing is a surfboard."

• 20:46Nilay Patel?

  Because it's always been a little bit ungainly. I think it's, this design has always looked best in the case. Now they've got the essential phone, the S8 is beautiful, other phones, Android phones are beginning to match the industrial design, get rid of the bezels. They've got to do something really big and splashy, and they've got to like, solve the problem of increasing revenue at the same amount of phone sales, because the phone sales are like flattening a little bit. That's a lot of problems to solve, and like, an easy way to solve it is be like, "We're gonna slice, slice off the top end of this market, where people are just gonna buy the best thing, because we're Apple, and a lot of people buy our best thing, and charge them more for a cooler thing." And like, you can view that cynically. I've been trying to present it cynically, but now that I've said it all out loud, it's like, eh, it makes a lot of sense.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  It's just a thing to do.

• 21:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like, it's fine.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  It's, I just want to mourn the passing of an era.

• 21:34Nilay Patel?

  You know, you're still drinking the same Coca-Cola as that guy, man. That's like that Andy Warhol quote.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Ah, no, he's eating the, he's got that sugar, he's got that like cane sugar stuff.

• 21:43Nilay Patel?

  Flying it in from Mexico. Like, you're drinking way nicer coconut water than me right now. Paul also bizarrely just pouring Coca-Cola in suit guys and fight. No, that's libel.

• 21:58Nilay Patel?

  You're not disputing the screaming, I have the same phone as you. But pouring Coca-Cola is where you cross the line. Yeah, it's wasteful. Dieter, what else do you know about the Note 8? Like, what's the thing? Is it, you know, they made that video about the Note 7. Uh, I think Sean described it as ridiculous, like the video of all the Note 7 owners being sad about the Note 7. Like, we're really sorry. I thought that video was great. Like, it was just like very heartfelt and neat. Um, and like well executed.

• 22:24Speaker 02

  They needed to justify the existence of the Note of like bringing it back, right? And have it be something more than just like, yeah, no, we like making this phone. And so they putting it in the context of there are like Note fans. There are Note loyalists who love this thing and so we're doing it for them. Is like the right jujitsu move for them to like address the explosions and then move immediately away from them. Uh, so that was a genius piece of marketing as far as I'm concerned.

• 22:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I know, we're gonna get one soon. I'm, you know, someone's gonna review it like, I think it's.

• 23:02Speaker 02

  The big question to me is how long is the battery life gonna last? Cause they, you know, they were appropriately conservative on the battery size. And they didn't increase the pixel count, even though the screen is bigger. So, I mean, it still looks great, whatever, but it's not like, it's not, it's a big screen, but it's not like a million more pixels or 10 million more pixels to push.

• 23:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  But it's still a bigger screen. And so can this thing actually last a day on that battery is a very interesting question.

• 23:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, just like having this conversation occurs to me that phones are about to become really interesting again. Like, there's a lot of really hot competition in this market right now. In a way I haven't seen in quite some time, right? Like. If Apple puts out this phone that's been well leaked, which I think we all assume that they will, that thing's gonna be cool. It's gonna look really weird, but it's gonna be cool and have like, you know, high-end processing power, all this AR kit stuff that they're, they seem to be really focused on. The Essential phone is really interesting. The S8 continues to just like be a great phone. And I think Apple actually has a lot of work to do. Pixel XL is coming in October. Yeah. I think Apple has a lot of work to do to catch up to the current state of Android cameras. So like, I'm hoping to see a jump there. There's just like a lot going on. The

• 24:13Nilay Patel?

  Note's cool and the Pixel stuff, I think, October? Is that what we're kinda looking at? The current? For the Pixel? Yeah. Yeah, the rumor is October 5th. Evan Blass said it was October 5th. Yeah. So like, I don't know, a couple of weeks. And I will say this, our Circuit Breaker show, live show on Twitter, starting on that October timeframe. So lots of toys for us to play with. Uh, did you just announce our Circuit Breaker live show? It's been announced. It was at NewFronts. People know we're doing it. We're doing a live show, guys. Look, just keep it on the low. Just for Vergecast people, don't, shh, be quiet. When all of you want the Vergecast to be a live stream, I think it should be an audio show. So now I'm gonna do another thing. We're gonna play with toys on cameras. It's gonna be great. Don't tell anyone. Just to be serious, a secret for Vergecast listeners. Alright, speaking of shows, I'm gonna read

• 24:58Nilay Patel?

  an ad. Lauren Grush, second episode of Spacecraft One Up. She also went and saw the eclipse in totality. So I'm gonna read this ad. I spent a little bit of time talking to her and we're gonna come back. And Paul is gonna tell us what's going on in Intel, because he knows now.

• 25:15Nilay Patel?

  This episode of the Vergecast brought to you by TransferWise. Do you ever need to send money internationally? Maybe you're an engineer who moved to the US, or a business owner paying suppliers in another country, or a freelancer getting paid by a client in a foreign country. You should use TransferWise, the cheaper, easier way to send money. Because when it comes to sending money, banks stuck in the past. Bold line from TransferWise. TransferWise is the future, and even bolder line. It uses a peer-to-peer network that trims the fat off of international payments. You pay into a local account and TransferWise pays your recipient from an account in their country. The currencies don't ever cross borders. Why does it matter to you? Because it lets TransferWise do things your bank can't. They don't charge you expensive fees or give you a poor exchange rate. And often, your bank just takes way too long. You also save time and money with TransferWise.

• 25:59Nilay Patel?

  TransferWise payments take seconds to set up. They charge one tiny fixed fee and they give you an exchange rate that would make your Uncle Larry proud. That's what they've written here. Do you have an Uncle Larry? I don't. Okay. That's what they've written here. So Uncle Larry, I hope you're proud. Anyway, see how much you could save by going to TransferWise.com or download the app from the App Store or Google Play. Once again, that is TransferWise.com. Transfer as in I need to transfer money to another country. Wise as in that Confucius guy sure was wise. Another thing they've written. That's it. TransferWise.com. Send some money.

• 26:36Nilay Patel?

  Lauren Grush.

• 26:36Speaker 03

  Hello.

• 26:37Nilay Patel?

  How's it going?

• 26:38Speaker 03

  It goes great. It goes great.

• 26:40Nilay Patel?

  It goes great? It went well?

• 26:41Speaker 03

  It went well. All is well.

• 26:43Nilay Patel?

  In the present, not in the past?

• 26:45Speaker 03

  In past, present, future, all is well.

• 26:48Nilay Patel?

  Good.

• 26:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:49Nilay Patel?

  So I want to talk to you about your show, "Spacecraft", which is very exciting. But I'm not going to start that way. Because what I really want to ask you about is the eclipse. Because you went and saw totality.

• 26:59Speaker 03

  I did. I was in Nashville with my family and our former colleague Miriam's family. It was a big party.

• 27:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 27:07Speaker 03

  And it was the craziest, coolest thing. I'm so glad I went. I went, well, okay. Of course, I wanted to see the eclipse, but I also wanted to take a picture of it. Because I have a DSL camera and I thought, you know, I've dabbled, maybe I can do it. So I learned some tips about how I should try. I got a solar filter and everything, set up my shot when we were down there. And everything was going fine. We had found this little park by the place that I was staying. It was really off the grid. Nobody knew about it. Like, a couple of people started showing up. We maybe had like a couple dozen people out there. And we had set up our shots and we were just fine for most of the day. We were like, it was, it was a little park on the water.

• 27:50Speaker 03

  So there was a lake, a little patch of grass where we had set up and then a bunch of trees because it was so hot. So we would go and sit underneath the trees, go check on our cameras and then go sit back down again so we wouldn't burn up. And everything was great. I would go out, take a couple of pictures. Because it takes a while, you know, it was like an hour and a half before it was completely covered. And, and then like 30 minutes before totality, you know, when it's totally covered up. There was this huge cloud that covered up the sun and that, and then I realized, I was like, oh, this is why everyone complains about clouds. Because you really can't see anything. It just completely goes away. Then the cloud went away and we were like, okay, we should be fine.

• 28:33Speaker 03

  And then my dad's standing there and he's like, I think you're in the clear. You're fine. I was like, dad, you just, you just jinxed it. And sure, sure enough, sure enough, the cloud comes back, the same freaking cloud, comes back. And then it's just hanging out on the edge of the sun for like the next 10 minutes. And we're just, Miriam and I are sitting there, we're like, do we move? Like, what do we, what do we do? And we're sitting and I'm starting to like freak out. Eclipse panics, that's in. Well, I mean, can you imagine? It was, it was clear all day up until that point. And then her dad comes running over and he's like, look over there.

• 29:14Speaker 03

  And there's this illuminated patch of ground and me and Miriam just make that mental decision like, okay, we're going. And we just like pick up our, because it's not, it's not easy to run with all this stuff. It's a tripod, a camera, a huge lens and the filter on top. So we were both like running across this park. I was barefoot because I'd kicked off my sandals. So I'm running on like rocks and sticks and stuff. And I was like, I'm dying for my art here. And then.

• 29:41Nilay Patel?

  I just want to be clear. You looked at each other and telepathically decided that you could outrun a cloud?

• 29:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, there might have been a like, a let's go kind of thing, you know?

• 29:51Nilay Patel?

  No, I just want to, I want the listener to know. You've heard Lauren a lot. Miriam has actually been on The Vergecast before too.

• 29:57Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:58Nilay Patel?

  She, she was on, when we did the first lady interview in 360, Miriam was on that episode. But Lauren and Miriam, it is not surprising to me at all that they would telepathically decide to outrun a cloud together. It's just, it's very in character for the both of you.

• 30:15Speaker 03

  It's how sync and sync we are for all this time of working together. Anyway, so we run to the patch and of course, Miriam sets up her shot in like two seconds. And we have two minutes, by the way. And I, I missed this part, but the entire time, Miriam had brought this timer that every couple of minutes would be like, five minutes to start of totality.

• 30:33Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god.

• 30:33Speaker 03

  So it was also, it was like really helpful, but also awful at the same time. Cause as the cloud was getting closer, it'd be like, three minutes to totality. And I'm like, what do I do? Make a decision. And so then we get there, it's like two minutes before and she's set up her shot. I'm like on the verge of tears because I can't find it. And just so you know, finding the sun with your solar filter on your camera is really tough because it blocks out literally everything but the sun. So you're searching in the sky and at this point, the sun's barely there because it's about to be covered. So I'm searching for a little bit, like sliver of sun in the sky. I'm like about to cry. And then all of a sudden, I just like swing the lens up and I find it and I start screaming. I was like, I found it, I found it.

• 31:17Speaker 03

  And then like one minute later, it completely covers it up.

• 31:22Nilay Patel?

  You got it.

• 31:22Speaker 03

  And I got it. And then I snapped my pictures and then after a bit, I just like flung my arms back and fell on the ground and just like watched it. Cause I was like, okay, I just have to like enjoy this for myself.

• 31:33Nilay Patel?

  What was totality like?

• 31:34Speaker 03

  Um, how to describe it? I really did feel like I was on another planet.

• 31:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 31:40Speaker 03

  Cause it, it felt like daytime and nighttime at the same time. And I know that's like a lame description, but it really did. It really felt eerie. It was not, it was, it was a, like a weird twilight zone that you're in. Cause you, it's still illuminated, but it's definitely dark. And you're like, oh my God, it was just daytime, you know? How is this happening right now? And the, probably the coolest thing was you turned around and it's sunset behind you, all the colors. I have a picture of it in the story that I wrote from Miriam's dad, actually. And it looks, it's like red, orange hues and it's dark sky above. It was really amazing to look at and everyone screaming. That was the other thing. People were legitimately screaming in terror.

• 32:26Nilay Patel?

  Terror?

• 32:27Speaker 03

  You knew it was gonna happen. I, at first, well, I remember, cause I was, I was so focused on getting the picture. But then I talked with, um, some people afterwards and I was like, was that just me or did I hear people like screaming scared? And they're like, oh yeah, they definitely were like, people were terrified. I was like, wow.

• 32:50Nilay Patel?

  Uh, here in New York, it was only 70%

• 32:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:54Nilay Patel?

  in New York and everyone was waiting for it to be totality. Like we were all out, like

• 32:59Speaker 03

  It's like, sorry.

• 33:00Nilay Patel?

  We were all standing out. There's like huge crowds.

• 33:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:02Nilay Patel?

  Our office in the financial district, so all these like suits. You know, like with the glasses.

• 33:07Speaker 03

  Great.

• 33:08Nilay Patel?

  And we were like, we should do a countdown. So we just kept on like randomly starting countdowns. It didn't work, but it was like a great moment here.

• 33:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:16Nilay Patel?

  Everyone was like sharing and

• 33:17Speaker 03

  Did it get noticeably darker?

• 33:19Nilay Patel?

  It got, uh, no, it got flatter. Does that make any sense? The light got really weird and flat.

• 33:25Speaker 03

  Yes, I do remember that. I remember at some point before the eclipse started, it felt as if I was in a room with a lamp on.

• 33:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 33:32Speaker 03

  Did it kind of feel like that here too?

• 33:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's, you know, like, like twilight or sunset time, like magic hour.

• 33:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:39Nilay Patel?

  It's like really beautiful.

• 33:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:40Nilay Patel?

  It was that color of light, but it wasn't beautiful.

• 33:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. No, I know exactly what you're talking about. It was very much like this, the, the, the light source feels artificial in a way.

• 33:51Nilay Patel?

  It was just like a weird moment.

• 33:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:53Nilay Patel?

  And then the, sort of the peak happened here. And it's funny because you know, the sun's going, or the moon's going across the sun.

• 33:59Speaker 03

  Right.

• 34:00Nilay Patel?

  So there's still like another hour

• 34:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 34:01Nilay Patel?

  of eclipse. And everyone's like, well, the peak happened. And it just like went back inside. And I was like, alright, that was it.

• 34:06Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 34:07Nilay Patel?

  Uh, okay, let's talk about your show.

• 34:08Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 34:08Nilay Patel?

  I'm, I can talk about the eclipse all day because it was super fun.

• 34:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:11Nilay Patel?

  But, you're making a, you're making a show about space.

• 34:14Speaker 03

  Making a show about space. We put up our second episode.

• 34:16Nilay Patel?

  Man, we're flying through these.

• 34:18Speaker 03

  We are flying through.

• 34:19Nilay Patel?

  Uh, this episode was about, so the first episode was you running around in, in space suits. Like, real physical.

• 34:24Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 34:24Nilay Patel?

  You're in the thing. This one's like all VR.

• 34:26Speaker 03

  Right, right. Well, this one, yeah, more simulation, so, uh, we got to do a lot when we were at NASA. We were at the Systems Engineering Simulator Facility. And that one, they had like a mock-up rover for driving on Mars, which we got to try out. It was pretty cool. Um, but I think my favorite part was definitely doing the VR spacewalks.

• 34:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:45Speaker 03

  And, because those are, that, there's a virtual reality lab at NASA, NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, and that is a place where astronauts legitimately go and they, uh, they've trained for their spacewalks because they can recreate whatever the spacewalk scenario is in VR. And it's really helpful for knowing, you know, exactly where everything is gonna be, you know, how far you can reach. Obviously, you can't reach very far, so it takes a little while to kind of scale. Like, if you need to get somewhere on the station, you have a better idea of, okay, I'm gonna probably have to find another thing to grab onto here, and then, you know, just underneath here, grab onto that. It's just a good way of like, having a spatial understanding.

• 35:27Speaker 03

  And then also, um, how to like, control your movement. So, in, on Earth, you'd probably pull yourself up, you know, in the, but in space, just moving your wrists will, will alter your entire body.

• 35:41Nilay Patel?

  Wait, really?

• 35:42Speaker 03

  Yeah. Because, you know, you don't have gravity.

• 35:44Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 35:44Speaker 03

  So, really, the only way to move is to, to just slightly change like, how you're, you, you know, how you twist yourself or something like that. So, it's a, it's a way of kind of breaking out of that, you know, that idea of how you think you should be moving versus how you would actually be moving in space. So, that was cool. And then, of course, we did the demonstration where they flung me off the space station and I had to get back.

• 36:11Nilay Patel?

  And to rocket yourself back to...

• 36:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:14Nilay Patel?

  The, the classic Lauren Grush line, "George Clooney was so much faster."

• 36:18Speaker 03

  (laughing)

• 36:19Nilay Patel?

  Uh, so that was like, that's an interesting rig. Like, you were... It's funny because taking video of VR is hard and then talking about it on like an audio show is harder.

• 36:27Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 36:28Nilay Patel?

  But you were in the big helmet and you're wearing, you know, kind of the big torso controller thing.

• 36:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I was supposed to kind of simulate the chest pieces that you have when you're wearing the, the actual space.

• 36:38Nilay Patel?

  But you were seated. So why, why were you seated as opposed to like standing up or whatever?

• 36:42Speaker 03

  Uh, I think it's, it's more because I, I, I don't actually know the answer, but I would say, assume it has more to do with the fact that you're moving your arms. Like when you're in, doing a spacewalk, your legs are kind of useless. That's why they usually put you in, um, harnesses or there's a foot restraint. Astronauts often get foot restraints just to hold them in place. Your real tools are your arms and your hands when you're doing spacewalks. So I think it was more about focusing on the upper part of your body than it was. Maybe, and, and it could also be the fact that since your legs don't really come into play, you know, you have to learn how to work without them.

• 37:22Speaker 03

  So maybe that had to do with why, with why sitting was important. It's really more of just kind of like making sure you, you're seeing things correctly and experiencing them from the body up.

• 37:32Nilay Patel?

  So when you were in the VR suit and they like jacked you off the station and you've got to use Safer to get back, was that as disorienting as it seemed?

• 37:38Speaker 03

  Oh yeah. And it was a, it was a little nauseating. Like when I took off the headset, I was like, oh, my stomach doesn't feel so great. And they're like, yeah, it's, it's pretty.

• 37:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:48Speaker 03

  Uh, a little nauseant, do you think?

• 37:50Nilay Patel?

  But the Safer like, it puts you in a correct orientation automatically, right? How does it do that?

• 37:54Speaker 03

  Oh yeah. So first off, Safer, it's this jet backpack that you've got on with little.

• 37:58Nilay Patel?

  It's just a regular, regular jet backpack.

• 38:00Speaker 03

  And it has little thrusters up near your shoulders. And, um, yeah, so what it does is it has this automatic, uh, spin control type thing. So you notice I was spinning and once you power up the, the backpack, it will try, it'll stop your spin. And then it's on you to get back. So the first thing I had to do, once I stopped spinning was find the station. Look to my left, there it was. And then you have to, you have two controls. You have this, how you spin, how you rotate. So first I rotated back and then once I was in the position that I wanted to be, um, then I switched into translation mode, which meant I could move forward or side to side. Um, and then basically it was just a way, it was a matter of

• 38:44Speaker 03

  making sure I went in a straight enough line, which is hard because you're, you know, if you move to the left just a little bit, that'll keep you go, like. You know, you don't have anything to stop you, so just the little movements that you make have a big impact in the long run. But, and I didn't actually quite make it back to the airlock that I was supposed to. But, or there was like, is that okay? And they're like, no, as long as you're at the station, you're fine. But I did end up making it back safely. Um, the best part was that, uh, I asked them how long it would, you know, you had. I, I said that in the video. It was like, they're like five to 10 minutes usually. And then when I got out, they're like, I don't know if you made it.

• 39:23Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 39:23Speaker 03

  And then, uh, then they were like, oh, actually you did it in four minutes. And I was like, what are you talking about? I did great.

• 39:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they're screwing with you. Uh, and then you also drove the Rover.

• 39:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:34Nilay Patel?

  Which is like the thing that I would want to do most of all in the entire world.

• 39:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, that one was cool. I just like how they designed their Rover. So the, the Rovers have 12 wheels and you, all you need is a joystick. So pretty much anybody could drive these things. But the best part is like, you move it, you push the joystick forward, it moves forward. You push the joystick sideways, all the wheels turn sideways and then the thing just moves sideways. And then you can also, if you rotate the joystick, they all, the wheels all form in a circle and you can like spin around. It's, it's pretty neat design.

• 40:05Nilay Patel?

  I want one. Can I have one? It's a couple billion, right?

• 40:08Speaker 03

  NASA has one that you can take out for a spin. We tried to get a, that one, but it was out of commission that day. So.

• 40:14Nilay Patel?

  We gotta go back.

• 40:15Speaker 03

  Next time, we're, yeah, we have to go back.

• 40:16Nilay Patel?

  We're coming back. Spacecraft season two greenlit. You heard it here first. One episode. It's just me in the Rover fucking going crazy.

• 40:23Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 40:24Nilay Patel?

  Um, so what's like the biggest takeaway from like your VR experiences or simulation experiences?

• 40:29Speaker 03

  Uh, I guess my biggest takeaway is just never, I mean, it's, it really just changes your perception. Never assume how things are gonna be out there. You know, like you think just moving, uh, you think just scaling the wall of something is gonna be easy, but it really did take me a while to get the hang of, you know, how you spin your wrist or, um, you know, what you need to grab on to. It's not very clear what you have that you can use out there. So yeah, it was just a, it was a good way of getting you out of your expectations and, and showing you the real challenges of just like minor tasks.

• 41:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 41:06Speaker 03

  Because. It's just like, you think getting back to the station would be easy. I mean, George, like I said, George Clooney makes it look easy. He's like floating around, you know, doing somersaults and stuff. But just moving forward is a task, you know?

• 41:21Nilay Patel?

  You know what's funny? I look at the comments of all these videos because I hate myself.

• 41:26Speaker 03

  Good, because you're doing it for me.

• 41:27Nilay Patel?

  I'm doing it for you. No, but like, one thing that comes up a lot in all these comments, almost all of your space videos, is people are surprised that it's not like what the movies are.

• 41:37Speaker 03

  Right.

• 41:37Nilay Patel?

  And it's amazing to me how much the movies color our perceptions of what it's like, especially the movies that want to be taken seriously.

• 41:47Speaker 03

  Right.

• 41:47Nilay Patel?

  So Gravity is like supposed to be so accurate, and then you're doing the actual thing.

• 41:52Speaker 03

  Right.

• 41:52Nilay Patel?

  And you're like, wait, it's radically different.

• 41:54Speaker 03

  The problem is, it would be, the movies would be so boring. But not, I mean, I think, I find all this stuff interesting. But yeah, hyper-realism means things would be a lot more slow.

• 42:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:05Speaker 03

  And a lot harder just to do very simple things.

• 42:09Nilay Patel?

  It turns out they would just die immediately.

• 42:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:11Nilay Patel?

  The movie's like five minutes long.

• 42:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, because he's, first off, he's not supposed to be using that thing. Like, what you learn is that they never use safer.

• 42:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:20Speaker 03

  It's always meant to be a backup plan. And you're always tethered to the outside of the space station, no matter what. So I don't know if her tether got broken when she was, or they were on the space shuttle. But I would assume they still had a tether, so I don't know how she got flung off, or I'm sure it got disconnected.

• 42:36Nilay Patel?

  I think it'd be amazing to re-watch Gravity with you after, after the run of the series.

• 42:40Speaker 03

  There's some, some parts in there where I was like, "The science."

• 42:44Nilay Patel?

  Well, that's why I would want to watch it with you. All right, spacecraft season three confirmed. It's just Lauren slowly watching Gravity by herself and yelling. That's great. You've got another episode coming next week. What's that one about?

• 42:56Speaker 03

  So this one is all about health and biology. So I feel like a lot of people, when they think about going to space, they think it's gonna be just like a big old fun time. But in reality, there's a lot of health issues that you have to deal with, especially if you're going into space for a long period of time. Your body changes, you go through fluid shifts. Like, your fluid shifts because they're not being pulled down by gravity. And that has a host of problems. And then also, most of your day is dedicated to working out. So like, if you want to be a fitness buff, then yeah, you could go to a space, but that's something you have to think about as well.

• 43:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 43:34Speaker 03

  So it has to do with that, and then also, you know, the space environment isn't necessarily hospitable all the time, so we talk about.

• 43:42Nilay Patel?

  What's the craziest thing that you did for this next episode?

• 43:45Speaker 03

  I did squat lifts.

• 43:50Speaker 03

  And I'm sure I'm gonna get... Enjoy reading the comments on this one, Neelai, because I'm sure everyone's gonna critique my form and give me all this crap about it, so really looking forward to that.

• 43:59Nilay Patel?

  I'm just gonna shut it off. Shutting off, really. We haven't even published it, and somehow comments are already off.

• 44:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:03Nilay Patel?

  Very confusing. Tuesday?

• 44:06Speaker 03

  Tuesday.

• 44:06Nilay Patel?

  On YouTube?

• 44:07Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 44:07Nilay Patel?

  And then all kinds of bits and pieces all over Facebook.

• 44:09Speaker 03

  Right.

• 44:10Nilay Patel?

  Very exciting. You can get ahold of Lauren on the Twitters.

• 44:12Speaker 03

  On the Twitters, @LaurenGresh, L-O-R-E-N-G-R-U-S-H.

• 44:15Nilay Patel?

  Spacecraft comes out on Tuesdays. Thanks for stopping by again.

• 44:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:18Nilay Patel?

  We'll talk to you again next week.

• 44:19Speaker 03

  All right.

• 44:19Nilay Patel?

  About squat lifts. I won't.

• 44:23Speaker 03

  And I'll never do them again.

• 44:24Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna do it. We'll have another eclipse. It'll be great.

• 44:26Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 44:27Nilay Patel?

  All right, thanks, Lauren.

• 44:27Speaker 03

  Bye.

• 44:29Nilay Patel?

  All right, we're back. Lauren, a delight as always. We said this already, but watch the next episode of Spacecraft. Actually, we were just talking about Google, but there's rumors, and we should get into those a little bit, but they named it. Oreo. During the eclipse.

• 44:43Speaker 02

  They had this whole event in New York where, like, they had an eclipse-watching party, and then the statue was, like, unveiled. Oreo statue. It's a superhero, a woman, actually. First time the mascot for Oreo has had a gender.

• 44:59Nilay Patel?

  Mascot for Android.

• 45:00Speaker 02

  Their whole theme for Oreos... For Android, excuse me. Their whole theme for Oreos superhero stuff, which is, I don't know, maybe a little bit overdoing it. There's stuff in Oreo. Don't get me wrong. But it's stuff like, "We do a better job of closing down crappy apps that eat your battery." And we promised this time... We promised this time Android updates will actually, you know, work.

• 45:28Nilay Patel?

  I don't want to undersell it. There's some other stuff, but it's other stuff like notification dots. And I'm excited to snooze notifications. That's pretty cool. But this like Oreo is not a massive game changing update to Android. It's a bunch of little stuff. It's a bunch of plumbing. I'm happy about all of it, but I'm not going to have the angst about being on Android and nougat. You know, in November, when all the pixels have them.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  Really?

• 45:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'm just not going to have that much angst about it. I'm really not.

• 45:59Speaker 02

  I don't, it's funny. Nougat, I feel like we made a huge deal out of it. It's Android. I mean, this is like the Android thing. They announced the new one. We're like, niggas. And I get it. And now no one talks about Android nougat anymore because all the other Android phones have come out. And like they're running their own weird versions of Android.

• 46:16Speaker 01

  Well, I do feel like nougat had a really relatively wide and rapid. It seemed like all the phones that had been announced or that had been released in the past year or so. Got it in a relatively quick pace.

• 46:31Speaker 02

  It's install base is still 15, little less than 15% of all Android phones right now.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe it's just a weird perspective.

• 46:40Speaker 02

  There are, Android's the most popular operating system on the planet right now. There are, you know, I don't know how many billion, over a billion devices running it currently. So 15% of that is, you know, not anything to sneeze at, or however you want to say it. But it's still, it's still fundamentally a problem that they can't get updates out to more devices more quickly.

• 47:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but I don't like, we wrote all this stuff about the Note 8. I don't recall anywhere in there being like, runs nougat, like it's just like accepted. And it's under this veneer of Samsung stuff. So great.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:15Nilay Patel?

  Right. And I think that's like a, that's a thing that Apple definitely has in its corner where they, you know, iOS 11 is out, people are playing with it, they're sharing with it. And then the next phone is like the ultimate embodiment of that OS. And like, you know, Google just doesn't have that, they're not playing that game quite that same way. I hope they do. I hope that, I hope they find a way to make the Pixel that thing, but they got a ways to go. Uh, other rumors though.

• 47:38Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, that is the cadence though. Yeah.

• 47:40Nilay Patel?

  Little smart speaker, little Google Home, little baby guy to take on the dot.

• 47:44Speaker 02

  Um, yep.

• 47:45Nilay Patel?

  I continue to believe the dot is like the smartest product in Amazon's entire library of products. Next to Kindle, which is wonderful, but you know. The Dot is like the new market. I think it makes a lot of sense for Google to go cheap. And then I think it puts the HomePod in this like other zone entirely.

• 48:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, they have to go cheap. I mean, the Home actually originally also was cheaper than the original Echo.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. What is the price that they rumored for this? I've lost the tab.

• 48:12Speaker 02

  I don't think that we know the price of this. This all comes from Android Police, who alongside the Dot competitor, uh, says that they're also gonna release a new Chromebook Pixel at like the $800-ish price point for a Chromebook, which is not as crazy as the Pixel and the Pixel 2 back in the day. Um, but still for Chromebooks, like the best Chromebook you can get right now is about 500 bucks. Uh, there's really nothing north of that right now. It was very difficult to convince anybody that it was worth spending over $1,000 on a Chromebook, uh, a few years ago, and that's because it wasn't. I thought the Pixel was beautiful. There are people who like are Pixel partisans, like that machine is still pretty awesome. But bang for your buck wise, like what you're doing is spending a bunch of money to feel nice about having a Pixel.

• 48:56Speaker 02

  You're not buying necessarily that much better of a computer.

• 49:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 49:00Speaker 02

  Um, we'll see what they do if in fact they do release a Pixel in October, Pixel Chromebook.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  I think I would maybe get a baby Google Home.

• 49:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  I, I, I think the, the Chromecast feature would, would be cool.

• 49:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  I'd like to roll into my room and say, "Google, play Path of Exile on YouTube."

• 49:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it does it.

• 49:27Speaker 01

  And then it does it.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  It's the dream. I've been saying that's the dream for a long time.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  Like, it's so, so little value that I need to not spend very much for that device that does that. But if I could spend just a little bit for the device that does that, I think I'd be into it.

• 49:40Speaker 02

  I'd be into it. Um. Our problem is we have, uh, an Alexa in a bathroom and an Alexa in the kitchen. Um, or an Echo and an Echo show, and we haven't put them on the same Amazon account because one's on mine, one's on my wife's. Um, yeah, no, don't do that. If you have multiple Echo devices in your house, put them all on the same account because if you don't, then they all will respond to you.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 50:04Speaker 02

  Because they don't, they're not aware of each other. So when I'm cooking, I'll like, I'll play NPR, listen to the radio, and I'll set timers. And then I get done cooking and then, you know, sit down to eat dinner and like, what is that noise? And it's, you know, it's the bathroom on the other side of the apartment. Playing the alarm, just going.

• 50:22Nilay Patel?

  That's amazing. You should set different wake words.

• 50:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:25Nilay Patel?

  That's kind of a fight. That's like a real couples fight. Like, I want computer, you can't have it.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  That's one of the reasons that Google Home is better, though, because it can recognize voices and play your stuff if it recognizes your voice.

• 50:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Uh, Google also, uh, deal with Walmart to do better shopping in Google Home. Which I think is real strong. Uh, although Amazon is still Amazon. Like, you know, it's like Google announces like a little pair up with Walmart to like make shopping on a Google Home easier. Amazon announces, "We've completed the acquisition of Whole Foods and all prices of avocados will now be cheaper and every Whole Foods will have an Amazon Prime locker in it. And the Whole Foods membership rewards is now Amazon Prime." And it's like, "Yeah, we hung out with Walmart. That's what we did."

• 51:10Speaker 02

  Google Shopping is now slightly less of a dumpster fire than it was before. It's, it's still a dumpster, it's just not on fire now.

• 51:17Nilay Patel?

  They bought a Walmart fire extinguisher.

• 51:21Nilay Patel?

  It took a little longer to put up than you would really hope for, but it still went out there.

• 51:25Speaker 02

  It still works.

• 51:26Nilay Patel?

  Uh, and then there's Samsung, actually DJ Kuo at the note, so they're gonna do a smart speaker too. Which feels like an enormous waste of time, but it's Samsung. They gotta have everything.

• 51:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:37Nilay Patel?

  You know, it's like, someone's got the Samsung house. It's probably DJ Kuo. Like, all the stuff is Samsung and it all works in perfect harmony because they're weird. They're weird twists on all the standards. Like, Aninet Plus. He's like, "I'd love Aninet Plus. It's just really tied this house together." And everyone was like, "I don't know if that is."

• 51:56Speaker 02

  I mean, I know Aninet Plus exists, but if you had, if you had made up any other like random brand name, I would have believed that it was real.

• 52:03Nilay Patel?

  That's what I'm saying!

• 52:04Speaker 01

  Double Whisper.

• 52:06Nilay Patel?

  Double Whisper. Samsung's newest smart home standard, Double Whisper. Uh, someone's gonna believe that's true. All right, Paul.

• 52:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:15Nilay Patel?

  Last week on the show, I said, "Hey, explain this Intel stuff to me."

• 52:18Speaker 01

  I was like, "I don't know what's going on." I was really confused by it, so I actually spent some time reading up on it.

• 52:24Nilay Patel?

  Um, Heim Gartenberg explained it to me today. It took him, I would say, three and a half minutes just to get to the basics, but I'm interested.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Here.

• 52:32Nilay Patel?

  Let's see it.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  I wrote down notes, so I don't get like anything super wrong, but here's what I think has happened.

• 52:40Speaker 01

  Intel is now entered what it's called, what it's calling its eighth generation.

• 52:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  But the first chips that are part of its eighth generation are what's called Kaby Lake Refresh. So it has slightly modified the Kaby Lake architecture by basically adding some more cores, more threads. And it claims you'll get about 40% improvement in performance.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  They also have modified the integrated graphics, but they didn't improve them. They only added like better compatible, like built in HTTP stuff. So that ostensibly you get better like 4K support because they, they changed the name of their integrated graphics from HD 620 to UHD 620, but they didn't actually change the power. So it's basically 4K compatibility like with TVs for copyrighted content.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  A non-tech thinks these might be a little hot.

• 53:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  So.

• 53:44Speaker 02

  They're desktop chips.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  No, no, no, this, what they announced are laptop chips.

• 53:49Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  They're the fifth, the 15 watts, right?

• 53:53Speaker 02

  Pretty hot laptop chip, I think.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  They're like, it's like the U series.

• 53:58Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 53:59Speaker 01

  Please don't ask me too many questions because.

• 54:02Speaker 02

  It's very confusing.

• 54:03Speaker 01

  The facts that these are, these are gonna be a basic laptop.

• 54:07Speaker 02

  I was gonna ask you a question.

• 54:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 54:08Speaker 02

  So we normally think of Intel chips as a tick tock. There's the tick where they reduce the nanometer size and there's a talk where they improve it. Is this like a tick tock tock?

• 54:19Speaker 01

  I mean, I think they've already talked about like moving past that, like that there's like.

• 54:24Speaker 02

  They talked.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes, thank you. That there's different, there's like these multiple stages of refinement. This is. We're in like 14 nanometer plus. I mean, the interesting thing is, is that they were 32 nanometers meters in 2011, right? That's when you're talking process, you're mostly talking about like how big it is, right? 22 nanometers was Ivy Bridge in 2012.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  Then Haswell was 22 nanometers in 2013. The Broadwell was 14 nanometers in 2014. And then we've been on 14 nanometers for a while now. And we're in 14 nanometers plus. And then there's gonna be maybe Coffee Lake, which is part of what this whole, a lot of the confusion was, is that five days before announcing these, this eighth generation, these like laptop processors, Intel was like, "Hey, here's our future plans for our ninth generation chips." And there's this thing called Coffee Lake. And like they were talking about 10, 10 nanometers. They're 10 nanometer plus, like not the first 10 nanometer chip they would do, the ones after that.

• 55:37Speaker 01

  That's what they were talking about five days before announcing these new laptop chips, which are the Kaby Lake Refresh.

• 55:43Nilay Patel?

  By the way, I was wrong. 15 watts is pretty good.

• 55:45Speaker 01

  That's like an ultra portable, right?

• 55:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Those are like 28 and 45.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  So non-tech thinks these might be a little hot for these, but maybe some like larger laptops that were using higher power chips might be able to get enough power out of these, these Kaby Lake Refresh chips. And therefore they could get better battery life. So that's the thing.

• 56:08Nilay Patel?

  There's a lot going on with these chips. Hyam told me that he wants to write a story called Core Wars. About AMD versus Intel being hot again.

• 56:16Speaker 01

  I think that's, I mean, I think the thing is that there's very, this is just a tiny little minor refresh. The only reason it's confusing is because Intel has all these nomenclatures. They've got their process, they've got their generations, they've got their, their lakes.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  And then, you know, obviously, they have a bunch of different power levels of chips in their desktop chips and different laptop chips and stuff like that.

• 56:41Nilay Patel?

  We should see if we can get the CEO of Intel to sit down and just like quiz him.

• 56:46Speaker 01

  I would, you know what would be great is just like put up a blank chart and he's got to fill in all the lakes.

• 56:54Nilay Patel?

  All the lakes, it's a map of lakes.

• 56:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, like maybe we fill in one of the lakes, right?

• 56:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  But what nanometers is that? Go.

• 57:03Nilay Patel?

  Torturing Brian Krasanich. Well, if you work at Intel, you can email us if you are able to get the CEO of Intel to fill in a lake chart.

• 57:15Nilay Patel?

  This episode of Vergecast also 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 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. You can download hours of movies or music in a matter of seconds. To learn more, visit snapdragon.com/gigabit today. Verizon this week announced it had an unlimited plan.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 57:46Nilay Patel?

  And it's breaking it into three unlimited plans, all of which are notably worse for the specific reason that Verizon is now capping video resolutions on its network. So you, you basically cannot get 1080p on Verizon's network anymore. Or, yeah, you just can't do it. The cheapest plan actually makes it even lower. The throughput speeds are capped as well. I think they're doing this because their network has been choked ever since they went to unlimited to respond to T-Mobile.

• 58:17Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 58:17Nilay Patel?

  AT&T has been doing this as well. They, they made less fanfare about it, but a bunch of AT&T's plans now have like Stream Saver or whatever it is, does the same thing automatically. AT&T's network also kind of choked. So this move to unlimited clearly had network of, network effects, had network effects they weren't anticipating. And now they're like capping these video speeds with AT&T at least.

• 58:42Speaker 02

  By the way, before we get into the, before we get into the industry stuff, I just want to point out that they took existing plans. Like the unlimited plan that I am on currently, they capped the amount of tethering I can get. And they capped the video quality I can get with 24 hour notice.

• 59:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 59:05Speaker 02

  Which is bonkers.

• 59:06Nilay Patel?

  And this is a few weeks after someone caught them throttling YouTube and they're like, oh, we just do these tests all the time. No, no reason to worry. And then like several weeks later, they're like, in 24 hours, we're capping your video bandwidth. Obviously there's net neutrality stuff, whatever to talk about. I think that's, it's there. I think it's actually less interesting. Like there's all these implications for it, but like whatever Verizon's going to do whatever Verizon does. And it's not like this FCC is going to do anything about it. So it's there. Great. Right. Like it's interesting to consider. But I think that is actually less interesting than the fact that we did that story. It popped up to the top of our charts like instantly.

• 59:47Nilay Patel?

  The Wall Street Journal did that story. The Wall Street Journal has been relentlessly promoting this story. They tweet it out every day. They've tweeted out every day for a week. The only reason any organization does that is if it's getting pick up. I think people are actually super pissed about this. And I think Verizon doesn't have a great argument and response, except to say, we need to manage our network more tightly. Which to me, if you're gonna do that and then also make the argument that mobile is the future. And we don't need all this like wired broadband competition. You have, you're, you're just kind of disproving your point that you're in this hyper competitive market. Where your consumers are happy with you and you can actually manage the shift to a purely mobile environment.

• 1:00:31Nilay Patel?

  That's what interests me. Also, AT&T, T-Mobile, let you turn this stuff off. You can turn off StreamSaver on AT&T and just pay the money and, you know, get, hit your cap and get throttled or whatever. Like, you're, it's a choice you can make. T-Mobile, you can pay like five bucks and like get HD video for a day. A hilarious way to price that, but I'm actually with like Paul on this. Like, I love goofy, weird pricing. Like, have some fun. Great. Like, that's a version of innovation.

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  I mean, it really sounds-

• 1:01:00Nilay Patel?

  Verizon, you cannot pay the money.

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:02Nilay Patel?

  That's ridiculous.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  That it's not even possible. It just sounds like they really overpromised and it sucks being the bearer of bad news as a company. And like, this is actual bad news. This is like telling your customers, we promised that we could do a thing for you. We can't.

• 1:01:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And you know, like John Ledger is just like-

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  There's no good way to-

• 1:01:22Nilay Patel?

  Sipping his tea.

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  Good way to spin it.

• 1:01:24Nilay Patel?

  Sipping his tea in his tiny, tiny coverage area.

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  I will say, I'd been recently thinking of like moving over to Verizon. It's like, well, you know what? Like, I've been on T-Mobile because I like their pricing. T-Mobile's put enough pressure on other companies to like improve. And like, I've got pretty bad cell reception. And like, my prime areas right now, not everywhere, but just in certain frequently habited spots, I just get bad, like, my office. All of the area around my office.

• 1:01:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:56Speaker 01

  I get bad reception on T-Mobile. Or, no, I get full bars, no data.

• 1:02:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. No, but that's true. When we were out for the eclipse.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Well, the eclipse just broke everything.

• 1:02:06Nilay Patel?

  Uh, but it was, Paul had full bars, no service. I had full bars in AT&T, and it was like chugging.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  And so I was like, well, man, I'd love to go to a better network, but maybe Verizon can't handle it either. So, I don't know.

• 1:02:20Nilay Patel?

  Verizon, Verizon's network since, even before the Unlimited, it's been terrible for me. It's been getting worse and worse and worse, to the point where I'm seriously considering switching. Uh, this, plus, uh, all the oath ad shenanigans, uh, as we think about switching. And then I'm like, okay, who am I gonna switch to? Well, AT&T also has ad shenanigans. T-Mobile does net neutrality shenanigans. I'd say I'd switch to Project Five, but the idea that I'd switch to Google because I'm annoyed by ads tracking is a very hilarious, ironic thing to say out loud.

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  Do the Xfinity. Comcast, Comcast.

• 1:02:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, why not?

• 1:02:58Speaker 02

  What about, what about Sprint? Like, until they get bought, you know, by SoftBank.

• 1:03:02Nilay Patel?

  Wow. Yeah, you get a free title subscription. You get, Jay-Z comes to your house.

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  Comes to your back door?

• 1:03:11Nilay Patel?

  He's like, what, what's up? I don't have a lot to do.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  I really appreciate you joining Sprint.

• 1:03:19Speaker 02

  We have come to a point where there are no wireless services that you could not feel shitty about. And that's always been that way, I suppose, but I don't know, with net neutrality back in the air and like, the idea that wireless has more competition and therefore it's like, going to be better than uh, wire line for net neutrality, I just don't believe it anymore. Like, they're all, they're just, they're just all bad. They're all evil. I hate them all.

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  And uh, I'm, I'm just, I'm just gonna give up on having internet on my phone altogether from now on. What's the point? In fact, I don't even need internet at all because all the wires go through evil companies too, so.

• 1:04:04Nilay Patel?

  Uh, so did you read, there is a really great Vanity Fair piece about oath, early this week. Um, and basically like, you know, they have AOL and Yahoo and they gotta like mash them together and make a new company. And I actually, you know, we, we used to work at AOL for their current CEO, Tim Armstrong. I think Tim Armstrong is doing this thing where he's, he's trying to create a new corporate culture by making them do crazy oath things. It's like, everyone has to like come up with a three-word oath to work at oath. It's like a real thing.

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:04:32Nilay Patel?

  Yep, it's a true fact. Um, but like it's smart. Because now the AOL people and the Yahoo people all hate the same thing, so they're a little family born of hatred.

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  There's people with like religious prohibitions against like swearing to do anything.

• 1:04:45Nilay Patel?

  I don't, you don't have like swear fealty. It's just called an oath, like. Anyway, uh, I think his personal oath is never give up. There goes a wall. This is like a real thing. It's all in peace. Um, but. The most interesting part of that whole story, which I think is fascinating, AOL is gonna close on this buyout of Time Warner, like it's gonna happen. Verizon obviously bought AOL and Yahoo. And there's, you know, an anonymous media executive who's like Verizon's got a huge problem here because they have to look through the wreckage of AOL and Yahoo and find some media that is good enough to put on the home screen of the phone because that's the ultimate play here.

• 1:05:29Nilay Patel?

  AT&T, when they finished buying Time Warner, they're not gonna, it's not even gonna be a question whether they should put HBO and Game of Thrones preloaded on the home screen of whatever phones and tablets they sell. It is not gonna be a question whether AT&T can start pushing, breaking CNN video across their network because that stuff is trusted and admired, it's like premium, high-end content. Verizon cannot push, I don't know.

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  Yahoo answers.

• 1:05:55Nilay Patel?

  Yahoo answers to anyone. Like, you know, HuffPost is great, but they, it's not at the same level. Like, they have to find something. And I think the economics of that for Verizon are gonna start to shake out in extremely uncomfortable ways. But it's also gonna lead to yet another set of net neutrality questions because AT&T is selling a garbage tablet now. What's it called? I have it on this list here. Uh, the primetime.

• 1:06:18Speaker 01

  Oh god, yeah.

• 1:06:19Nilay Patel?

  So AT&T is gonna sell a primetime. Uh, it's a little Android tablet. It's preloaded with all their DirecTV stuff. Um, and it's 20 bucks a month. And it is basically a TV that runs on their network outside, like, your data plan stuff because it's all, they're giving DirecTV away, it doesn't hit your data cap. It's 20 bucks a month. And it's a, it's basically an Android cable box. And like, that's the model they're moving towards. And I think it's somewhat fascinating, but also terrifying because that's the future for all of these companies.

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  And that's different than a Fire tablet because they're also a, a delivery company?

• 1:06:56Nilay Patel?

  I mean, so Amazon makes a bunch of TV shows, but they don't, it's not HBO and CNN. It's not like... They're not getting Harry Potter out of the deal, right?

• 1:07:05Speaker 01

  They've got some pretty, I mean, they're, they're competitive with Netflix.

• 1:07:09Nilay Patel?

  I, I don't, I agree with you. I just think Time Warner is a media conglomerate, is many, many, many times bigger than Netflix and Amazon, right? Like Netflix's competition is HBO. That's just one part of Time Warner, and it will be just one tiny part of AT&T, right? And Amazon's competition is HBO, which is just one part of this massive stack of media properties.

• 1:07:32Speaker 01

  I mean, Amazon's competition is like Cub Foods.

• 1:07:36Nilay Patel?

  Well, this part of it.

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  Publix.

• 1:07:38Nilay Patel?

  Publix. Hannaford's going down.

• 1:07:43Speaker 01

  Can we start writing more about grocery stores?

• 1:07:45Nilay Patel?

  We have to now. It's the hottest tech market in America.

• 1:07:49Speaker 01

  Like new, like end caps?

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  Like, like around the Super Bowl, somebody does like a really cool stack of like some soda.

• 1:08:00Nilay Patel?

  Jeff Bezos is in there, just like stacking up the chips.

• 1:08:05Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. Anyway, I just think it's like fast, like what's going on with these mobile companies is their networks are choked, they're looking for other ways to make money. There's these little glimmers of what they're gonna have to do, and most of it looks like buying huge media companies and preloading content for you. And I, we complain a lot about carrier bloatware, and like, it's bad when it's like VZW Navigator or whatever. It's gonna be worse when it's like the least important Yahoo property just starts showing up on your phone. That's it. That's my terrible vision of the future.

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  Would you rather have, buy a phone from Sprint and have the title app preloaded with the newest Jay-Z album on it, or buy a phone from AT&T and have HBO Go preloaded with the most recent episode of Game of Thrones on?

• 1:08:53Nilay Patel?

  The thing is, I already pay for the service. It's like, I'm not getting anything out of that deal. But I'm gonna go AT&T.

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Dieter?

• 1:09:02Speaker 02

  Devil's Choice.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  Cabin in the woods.

• 1:09:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'm going, fully off the grid. And then he goes to the grocery store. He's like, I can't escape!

• 1:09:10Speaker 01

  You can like, fill in a form when you buy the phone.

• 1:09:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  For which info.

• 1:09:13Nilay Patel?

  No, it's true. To get away from the tech industry now, you have to start like, hunting and gathering your own food. You can't even go to the grocery store.

• 1:09:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is really dark, because there's a really good new Unabomber documentary, so we should probably change the subject.

• 1:09:25Nilay Patel?

  Oh my. I wouldn't have even made that connection.

• 1:09:29Speaker 02

  Hey, it's really good. Apparently, he made his own glue out of deer hooves, so that they couldn't track where his glue came from.

• 1:09:36Nilay Patel?

  That's dedication. Also terrifying. Okay, uh, few tiny lightning round items.

• 1:09:42Speaker 02

  Every week.

• 1:09:43Nilay Patel?

  Oh, Paul! Every week? I never forget.

• 1:09:46Speaker 01

  Never. Uh, this one's called, every week it's called, I mean.

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  Yoda Phone 3: Still Yoda-ing.

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  So Yoda-

• 1:10:00Nilay Patel?

  Yoda Forever.

• 1:10:01Speaker 01

  Yoda Forever. Yoda, not Yoda, I don't sell, I can't, Yota.

• 1:10:07Nilay Patel?

  Yoda Loaded.

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  Yota Phone.

• 1:10:08Nilay Patel?

  Yoda.

• 1:10:09Speaker 01

  Um, Yota makes a phone with an e-ink screen on the back.

• 1:10:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:16Speaker 01

  And it's just one of those things that it looks like it's like a bad Kickstarter idea, and I'll never ship it, and I'll never succeed, and they'll definitely not make three of them. But here we are. So, it's kind of like a mid, uh, low-end phone, uh, but it's got, you know, 5.5-inch 1080p AMOLED on the front, and a 5.2-inch e-ink display on the back. It's about 600 bucks. It's probably only going to China. But I just love, I just love this idea. I just love, love the idea of like, a second screen on the back, and it doesn't make a lot of sense, and I've never purchased one.

• 1:10:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we should get one.

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  Well, I'm just, yeah, we're definitely trying to. But I'm just happy that they're, they just keep Yoda-ing.

• 1:10:57Nilay Patel?

  They're at it.

• 1:10:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:58Nilay Patel?

  They figured out a little market that works.

• 1:10:59Speaker 02

  The e-ink screen on the back is one of those things where you, like, it feels, it's like the Note. It's, it's an aspirational thing, where you like, imagine, yeah, I'll just leave it face down, and it'll show my stuff, and when I'm going to bed at night, I can read a ebook on it, and it won't hurt my eyes.

• 1:11:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:15Speaker 02

  Like-

• 1:11:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Yeah, I won't get that blue screen syndrome or whatever they call it. I just got upsold super hard at LensCrafters. I needed new glasses and they're like, "These ones are specially tinted to filter out blue light." I was like, "Do they turn everything blue?" And they're like, "No."

• 1:11:30Nilay Patel?

  Like, "We figured it out." Same color. So I don't even know if it's working. Oh. But I was like, "Yeah, give that to me."

• 1:11:36Speaker 02

  There was a whole thing there in the 90s. They were called, uh, "Blue blockers."

• 1:11:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's what I was worried about.

• 1:11:40Speaker 02

  Yellow glasses that everybody was trying to, you know, they're trying to convince everybody who ever used a computer that they needed to wear blue blockers and you just, you just looked like an idiot because you're just wearing yellow glasses.

• 1:11:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Yeah, it was for like computer users and like avid skiers.

• 1:11:56Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah.

• 1:11:57Nilay Patel?

  But now, I don't know. LensCrafters got an extra 20 bucks out of me. So we'll see, we'll see how that went. See if I'm calm at night or if I need an in-screen. Alright.

• 1:12:07Nilay Patel?

  Two lightning round items. Survey finds Apple TV losing badly to Roku and Amazon living room. I think we're all expecting a new Apple TV. Whatever Apple's next event is. It's all in the firmware. It's been leaked 4K HDR. But Roku and Amazon's stuff is real cheap. Yeah. Can Apple make a $50 Apple TV? Right, or even cheaper, like Roku's $35 streaming stick. It's not like the greatest experience in the world, but you know what it does? Plays Netflix. Yeah. So like, I think that's like a huge question for Apple. I will also say this confidently, we have made so much fun of Gene Munster on this show and in our lives because he's always like, "Apple's gonna make a TV." They should have made a TV. I think they missed the window to actually make a TV. They should have just made a TV. Why? Because everyone would have bought it. When?

• 1:12:52Nilay Patel?

  I don't know, last year, two years ago. Like, they could have put out that product. It's like, "This is the Apple TV." A lot of people would have had it in their houses. And then they could have, like, people would have bought that, I think, more than the Apple TV. But everyone else bought a smart TV in the meantime. Yeah. Those things are... They've hit the point of good enough and there's very little reason to buy another box because you're not going to get some massive upgrade. Right. And so everyone's buying the cheaper boxes for all their other TVs. And I think they missed that turn when they could have put the software on the display. Interesting. Yeah, that's my theory. Blatting right. Dieter, you want to talk about Safari and AMP?

• 1:13:30Speaker 02

  So AMP, I mean, AMP, if you're not familiar, is Google's custom version of HTML that gets served usually from Google's own servers and it's faster, but it's also a weird setup. Anyway, when you copy a link that's AMP in iOS 11 and then paste it somewhere else or share it in some other app, iOS figures out what the actual canonical web link is, not the AMP version of it, and shares that, which is great because, you know, most people actually prefer that even though it's slower. It's, I haven't actually, like, I was going to tweet a bunch of stuff and then I was like, ah, whatever, I would think about it, but to me, it feels like there's a little bit

• 1:14:14Speaker 02

  of a, like, platform proxy war happening between Google and Apple and they're using the web as like the, I don't know, the grenade, hand grenade that they're like throwing at each other before it explodes. Like they're pulling the pin and they go, ah, no, you catch it. Because they're changing AMP links, but do you think they're changing Apple News links?

• 1:14:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they're not.

• 1:14:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:37Nilay Patel?

  Because they just want to kick you back into their app.

• 1:14:40Speaker 02

  Right. So that's weird. I don't know. It's fine. It's interesting. It's, um, it's, what's funny is Google always said that AMP is a, you know, it's part of the web and it's, you know, it's morally superior to Apple News or I don't know if Google's actually said that, but like the basic gist is, hey, you know, this is a standard. Anybody can make an AMP thing that can read AMP and it's not proprietary to a single platform and so therefore it's slightly better than an Apple News link or a Facebook News link, which I think is true. Man, if we're in a world where like, there's a link and different platforms are going to be

• 1:15:20Speaker 02

  playing hijinks games about what happens when you take that link and try and put it someplace else, that's really scary, right? That's, that's the opposite of what the web is supposed to be. And I want to be a little bit angry at Apple for playing games with, with a link that Google created, because it's a Google thing. But I'm also mad at Google for creating a thing that looks like the web and smells like the web, but maybe isn't really fully the web. But maybe it is, but who knows? Like, it just gets really complicated really fast. And I'll wrap it up by saying 50%, 57% of users use apps more than they use a web browser. 50% of all mobile use is in apps, not in a web browser.

• 1:16:04Speaker 02

  And so, it's not like the web. This is, this, it's gone, it's dead. Good night, sorry. I love you, links. That was the first cast, everybody. I miss you. The web is dead, you heard it here first.

• 1:16:14Speaker 01

  The web is dead?

• 1:16:14Speaker 02

  You heard it here first, and also during every previous episode of the show for the past two years.

• 1:16:19Speaker 01

  No, it's always been, is the open web dead?

• 1:16:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:23Speaker 01

  But Neil is, Deirdre's saying, yes.

• 1:16:27Speaker 02

  Well, here's my read on it. It's not dead, it's just, you know, it's in hospice care.

• 1:16:33Speaker 01

  See, that's different than dead.

• 1:16:35Speaker 02

  Only mostly dead. It takes a lot of work to go from an AMP link to the canonical, canonical link.

• 1:16:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:41Speaker 02

  Like, it's, it's actually much harder than you think. Because it's, like, we serve a lot of AMP pages, right? And our AMP URL structure is like our regular URL, and in the middle of it, it's slash platform slash AMP. But that's not what the Washington Post does. Like, they have a different AMP.

• 1:16:57Speaker 01

  And it seems kind of random, like, like, I feel like half the webpages that I end up on that are AMP, I can scroll to the top and there's a place to get the real URL?

• 1:17:05Speaker 02

  No, that's only on Google. So if you search on Google and you get the carousel of news, like, if you search, like, Verge Galaxy Note 8.

• 1:17:13Speaker 01

  So it's only if I use an AMP link from Google search?

• 1:17:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, so Twitter also serves AMP pages. So if you're in the mobile Twitter client and you click a link, a Verge link, you'll get our AMP page. There is no facility inside of the Twitter client to get you the real URL.

• 1:17:29Nilay Patel?

  So like Safari has to be smart enough to know what the hell's going on. And then also smart enough so that when you hit share, it can somehow parse out the canonical URL from the AMP URL. And that means somebody had to sit there and figure it out, which is like a lot of effort for Apple, I think. Like, it's not an accident. Like, they, they had to like engineer their way to that result.

• 1:17:51Speaker 02

  There's all this complication of what Apple is doing on iOS. Don't forget that AMP itself is also super freaking complicated. So each platform that shares AMP, either it's Google Search or Twitter, can do it in a slightly different way. People who make AMP pages, it doesn't necessarily, you don't have to have a canonical URL. So when you go to theverge.com, we've got our mobile page, but then it also serves an AMP version of that same thing. Uh, that's canonically linked back to the original. But if you want, you could just make your whole damn site out of AMP. And it's just, it's just AMP and that's all.

• 1:18:20Speaker 01

  Just as a technology.

• 1:18:21Speaker 02

  So it has to, no, but like, like, there's no, like, non-AMP version to share. It just is, it's just on AMP. And so it's, like, Apple had to figure that out, too.

• 1:18:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:33Speaker 02

  So.

• 1:18:33Nilay Patel?

  I don't think anyone's made an entire AMP site, though. Have they?

• 1:18:36Speaker 01

  I would.

• 1:18:37Nilay Patel?

  I know there've been experiments.

• 1:18:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. I would imagine that most AMP links are, are pages that have a canonical URL in their source code that would be pretty easy to scrape out.

• 1:18:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's, they're all different. So it's not fixed.

• 1:18:53Speaker 01

  I mean, when you're looking at the actual address bar, but I'm saying inside of the actual HTML of the page.

• 1:18:59Nilay Patel?

  Right, but I'm saying because AMP, the way AMP works and the way everyone can just make AMP however they want, Apple would have to figure it out every time. So they would have to like parse the URL. Like, you hit share, they grab the URL, they have to read the page, read the source code, find the canonical URL.

• 1:19:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:17Nilay Patel?

  Somewhere in that page, which is a non-standard location.

• 1:19:20Speaker 01

  But it's tagged.

• 1:19:22Nilay Patel?

  One hopes.

• 1:19:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:19:24Nilay Patel?

  It's just, because, because of what Dieter's saying, some pages won't ever even have it because they're just, the whole thing is AMP. This is the longest lightning round discussion of Google AMP that has ever taken place. I'm gonna end on a high note, a happy note. Another monster gadget note, which is that the Nikon D850 came out last night, like midnight.

• 1:19:45Nilay Patel?

  Forty-five point seven megapixels, full frame. I, like DSLRs are not like a thing anymore, but I've never wanted a camera more than I want this camera.

• 1:19:53Speaker 01

  Why this one?

• 1:19:54Nilay Patel?

  I, like, I'm a Nikon stan, like, from way back. Like, I've always had Nikons. We run a Canon shop.

• 1:20:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:00Nilay Patel?

  Cause like, the video team uses them. Our James, our creative director's always been a Canon guy. They share lenses, like, big happy party. And there's like me with my Canon glass in the corner. I, like, you know, I have an iPhone. Again, we have the eclipse. We're like screwing out in the portrait mode on the iPhone. It was like really fun. I bought my wife an Alpha 5100 for her birthday. And I was like, taking pictures with it. I was like, these are way better than my stupid cellphone photos. And then I pulled out my D7100. I was like, these are even better. And that thing is ancient.

• 1:20:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:29Nilay Patel?

  Like, I think there's something you said for like, you know, we're gonna add two more sensors to this camera. One's depth, one's IR, like. You know what's great is a huge lens and a giant sensor. And a mirror that flips when you push the button.

• 1:20:41Speaker 01

  See, that's the thing. I just hate that flipping mirror. I just hate that sound.

• 1:20:46Nilay Patel?

  On the Nikon, you can put it in a mode where it just holds the mirror up as though we're mirrorless. And it actually can get a pretty good frame rate or shoot rate with the mirror just up in the live view constantly. Uh, so it kinda has some of those features too.

• 1:20:59Speaker 01

  Here's an idea, though. Just get rid of the mirror. Has anybody ever tried to do that and made really great cameras? Hmm, I wonder.

• 1:21:09Nilay Patel?

  Oh, fine. Get out of here. All I'm saying is the thing's a tank.

• 1:21:12Speaker 01

  All I'm saying is we're a Canon shop, but we have a, apparently a few Sony lenses and we, cause we have the A7S2 here.

• 1:21:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:20Speaker 01

  But, yeah, those Sony lenses are really popular and they're always checked out. So I always have to use Canon lenses with an adapter.

• 1:21:27Nilay Patel?

  That's true. We have a bunch of A7Ss. People love them.

• 1:21:30Speaker 01

  I love that camera, man.

• 1:21:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, alright.

• 1:21:32Speaker 01

  Well, I'm happy for you and your Nikon.

• 1:21:34Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna buy this giant, super expensive, thirty-three hundred dollar Nikon tank. We'll find you in your Sony. And I'm just gonna slowly crush it with my tank. Just pound it in a submission. It's gonna be great. Uh, alright, that is the first cast for today. Uh, I wanna tease something. Ashley Carmen, who's been on the show a bunch, Kaitlyn Tiffany, who's been on the show a bunch, they have a new show coming out, a new podcast. We're gonna start over the next couple of weeks piloting some segments. You, you hear them? The show, I'm gonna, I'm not gonna tell you what it's about. I'm gonna tell you the name. It's called. Why'd you push that button? I'm very excited about it. So, listen for that in the coming weeks. Like, beyond excited about it. There's also other podcasts you can listen to.

• 1:22:18Nilay Patel?

  Lauren Good hosts a great podcast called Too Embarrassed to Ask. Kara Swisher hosts Recode Decode. Peter Kafka hosts Recode Media. All of that is on iTunes. Go check it out, listen to it. It's wonderful. You're gonna love it. We've got new podcasts coming. You can also talk to us on Twitter. Paul's at FuturePaul, Dieter's at Backlon, I'm at Reckless, Verge's at Verge. By the way, Instagram is great lately. Our social media managers are doing a great job with that. So, go to @verge on Instagram, check that out. We're doing this new thing. Zainab, one of our social media managers, is doing flash reviews, where she takes her reviews and turns them into like, little Instagram gallery stories. It's neat. Check that out. And I think that's it. That's right. Rock and roll.

• 1:22:58Speaker 02

  Paul.

• 1:23:00Nilay Patel?

  Paul.

• 1:23:00Speaker 02

  I need a catchphrase.