Apple event rumors, Galaxy Note 8 review, and Loren in zero gravity

We’re one week away from The Vergecast Live in San Francisco, so Nilay, Dieter, and Paul talk through the last-minute rumors about what to expect at Apple’s event on September 12th. We also dedicate part of the show to the Galaxy Note 8, which was reviewed on the site this week. And for the season finale of her video series Space Craft, Loren Grush stops by to tell us what it was like being in zero gravity on a parabolic plane. There’s a lot more in between that, so listen to it all and you’ll get it all. 03:14 - Juicero, maker of the doomed $400 internet-connected juicer, is shutting down 06:41 - The Boston Red Sox used an Apple Watch to steal pitching signs 10:44 - Galaxy Note 8 review 31:09 - Space Craft episode 4 with Loren Grush 52:41 - Apple iPhone 8 event: what to expect 1:16:32 - Paul’s weekly segment “Untitled” 1:20:34 - lots of TV stuff Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of The Verge Network Media Group. It's not right.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  V and M?

• 0:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, which is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. That's what I was trying to get to.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:20Nilay Patel?

  It's a thing that we're gonna start saying now.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 0:22Nilay Patel?

  Because we have a whole network. And we're the flagship of that network.

• 0:28Nilay Patel?

  I just, look, The Ezra Klein Show is great.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:32Nilay Patel?

  But...

• 0:32Speaker 01

  If I know anything about boats, you're the boat that you believe you are in your heart.

• 0:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And that boat's a frigate. Whatever a frigate is. Look, I've been playing a lot of Assassin's Creed: Black Flag.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  Of course you are.

• 0:44Nilay Patel?

  And so much of that game is boat identification.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  You were like, finally, a sequel to Sid Meier's Pirates, so I have another boat game.

• 0:52Nilay Patel?

  It was just, I don't know. I just started. It just started happening to me. Anyway, welcome to The Vergecast. I'm here, I'm Neil Ippatell. Paul Miller is here. Hello. Dieter Bohn is here.

• 1:03Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 1:04Nilay Patel?

  And here's what I'm gonna tell you about the three of us. Next week, we will be taping The Vergecast live in San Francisco on the 13th. It's the day after the Apple events, we'll have a whole bunch of Apple news, and we'll have an audience. You can be in that audience. The show is gonna be at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco. Doors are at 6:00. The three of us will be there. I think there's like a chance that Casey will just rush the stage and be on the show.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  I would be really disappointed if he does rush the stage.

• 1:35Nilay Patel?

  Lauren is actually gonna cover, Lauren Good's gonna cover the Apple event with us. I'm trying to work her in. The crew will be there. The people you love on The Vergecast. Mission Bay Conference Center, 6:00 PM on the 13th. Dieter, what's the link for tickets?

• 1:47Speaker 02

  It is bit.ly/thevergecastsf. Not just vergecastsf, which is what I said last week. That points to the edit page for the event. Because I screwed it up.

• 1:59Nilay Patel?

  Way to reveal that information.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  If you see any typos though.

• 2:02Nilay Patel?

  Also, my password is password 123.

• 2:07Nilay Patel?

  But no, go, there's a post on the site, we've been tweeting about it, it's on Facebook. You can go to this complicated bit.ly link. Come to the show. If you're gonna be in San Francisco, you're gonna be at the Apple event. You live close to there. I got a tweet from somebody who's flying in to see us. Oh, that's amazing.

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 2:23Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah, it's great. We love all of you. We'd love to see you. Every time we've done a live Vergecast, it's been the most fun. We did a bunch of stuff by Southwest, you know, reminded me last time. They're always great. We love seeing everybody. You can hang out with us beforehand. There's an open bar. It's gonna be great.

• 2:36Speaker 02

  What?

• 2:37Nilay Patel?

  13th, 6pm, San Francisco Mission Bay Conference Center.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:40Nilay Patel?

  Come see us. Three of us. You know, we'll, other Verge staffers will be attacking us from the wings. It's gonna be awesome.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  You could also, if you use the Facebooks, you can just search for Vergecast Live on Facebook and you'll find our event page for it.

• 2:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, or if you use Google, you can search on Google for Vergecast Live San Francisco Mission Bay Conference Center and then probably find something.

• 2:59Speaker 02

  Right. And if you use Bing, I'm sorry.

• 3:03Nilay Patel?

  Duck, duck, go users. I'm sorry. This is not your day. Anyway. Speaking of which, there's a whole bunch of stuff to talk about. We gotta talk about, you know, leaks about the Apple event next week are coming fast and furious now. But I want to start with what I think is the most important story in tech ever, which is that Juicero.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 3:21Nilay Patel?

  Has shut down.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  Come on.

• 3:23Nilay Patel?

  And the reason I wanna bring it up, one, they just, they literally just shut down and the next day, the founder was like Instagramming from Burning Man. So he's cool. He's doing fine.

• 3:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:35Nilay Patel?

  But Paul, the Circuit Breaker team has been on the pods beat.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:41Nilay Patel?

  For quite some time. This, to me, is the most, like, the loudest pod failure that has occurred.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  I mean, the machine was literally loud when it, like, ran the compression thing to squeeze the bag.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  One of the best things I ever saw about Juicero is a hardware engineer did like a deep blow-by-blow of how

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Insanely over engineered the product is.

• 4:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Like, it's basically, it's, it's, it performs a, a function that is sort of a hundred to $200 range of a function.

• 4:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  But.

• 4:15Nilay Patel?

  They sold it for $400. By the way, in case you don't know what Juicero is, it's squeezed bags of juice.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  It's a squeezer.

• 4:21Nilay Patel?

  It's a squeezer. So the machine is a $400 squeezer and then then.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Which, which, you know.

• 4:26Nilay Patel?

  And then you bought a subscription to bags of juice.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  Of course, you bought a subscription. I mean, that's, that's what fascinates me about the pod thing. It's this, this, this whole thing of, of, of locking something down with a combination of an app and a proprietary

• 4:41Speaker 01

  object. And that's really cool. But Juicero just made their product way too expensive. Basically, you can only do that sort of obsessive engineering if you're basically an Apple skill. Like, there's, like, hardware engineers that talk about, you're just like, don't try to be like Apple. Everybody, when they try to make a product, they're like, oh, we'll do it like Apple. Like, you, you can't. And it's not, it's not because you're bad at your job. It's because you, you can't buy a factory to do one part in one really specific way that you want. And if you try to get real specific, or try to put really expensive components in, you're not gonna have the scale to be able to sell it affordably. They didn't sell it affordably. Also, then they had the great scandal of, turns out, you can squeeze bags with your hands.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Which was great.

• 5:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  And there's something just user hostile about having a proprietary bag that you have to scan the barcode and it's tracked and.

• 5:39Nilay Patel?

  DRM fruit.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it had every, everything wrong. The thing about it, though, is that one of my greatest childhood memories was going to, like, my great aunt's house in Pasadena. She had a grapefruit tree, and we'd get grapefruits right off the tree, and then had, like, a hand-produced juicer. Like, that fresh juice is really amazing.

• 6:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and you could get it in a bag.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:03Nilay Patel?

  And then a robot would squeeze it for you.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:05Nilay Patel?

  For $400.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  For more at first.

• 6:11Nilay Patel?

  This, to me, is, is just a joke.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  $6.99.

• 6:18Nilay Patel?

  There's a really great video. They came to our office and Jake made a video with them. And he, Jake is like a sincere human being. He's a good dude. And he was trying to be sincere. And you just watch the video. And eventually, the, just the reality of what's happening just overcomes Jake. You just watch the video. It's great. Anyway, there's that story. The other second most important story in tech this week. Not the Note 8 review, not the iPhone event preview. But the Boston Red Sox were caught cheating.

• 6:52Speaker 02

  Come on.

• 6:53Nilay Patel?

  Using, I'm just doing, I'm just torturing you guys with not news before we do this. I love this story. The Red Sox got caught cheating.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  It took a lot of baseball knowledge to understand the scope of how precisely it was cheating. How they did it, how the Apple Watch was involved, why an Apple Watch was involved. Who communicated what to who. There was a whole lot of like stuff.

• 7:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  Built into this. Here's what I think was happening, given my limited understanding of baseball. And you tell me if I got it right.

• 7:23Nilay Patel?

  Because I'm a baseball expert.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Who's gonna talk about?

• 7:26Nilay Patel?

  Go ahead.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Does anybody know about baseball here? Are we way out of our depth?

• 7:30Nilay Patel?

  Andrew's just shaking his head in the booth right now. Okay, go ahead.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  You got somebody watching a video feed, zoomed way in on the catcher. The catcher signals a pitch, says, "Do a fastball."

• 7:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  So, the guy who was watching that furiously texts messages.

• 7:49Nilay Patel?

  Like a coach in the dugout.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  Somebody in the dugout?

• 7:53Nilay Patel?

  Somebody in the dugout. So, an assistant coach in the dugout had an Apple Watch on.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  But then, they'd have to tell, like, the batter can't see into the dug-

• 8:02Nilay Patel?

  Right. So then, they like signal, "You need a runner on second base." So, the assistant coach in the dugout gets a text on his Apple Watch. By the way, proving conclusively that the only smartwatches are good for is notifications.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  And fitness.

• 8:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. By the way, why not have that be a fitness?

• 8:18Speaker 01

  What's more fit than a professional sport?

• 8:22Nilay Patel?

  It's just like the fact that they did it with an Apple Watch instead of like a Fitbit. You can't cover that. He could be like, "I'm just checking the steps." Anyway.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  If they have LTE in the next Apple Watch.

• 8:31Nilay Patel?

  It's all over.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  That's gonna be even better.

• 8:34Nilay Patel?

  So that he would get the text in the dugout, communicate to players, and the players would communicate to the runner standing on second base. It's not clear to me what the runner on second base then did. Like, if he just started screaming, "Fastball!" Like, I don't know.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  But what-

• 8:51Nilay Patel?

  Because that is not in any part of these stories.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  The amount of steps.

• 8:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  Like, how many time... I just feel like, I know the pitchers take a while.

• 9:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  To think about what they're gonna do and get warm.

• 9:06Nilay Patel?

  You're doing great, Paul. A+.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  But that lag, that's just so inefficient. Like, the latency on this.

• 9:17Nilay Patel?

  You know when baseball, where the pitcher like nods and shakes his head at all the different signals? And by the way, the signals change when there's a runner on second base, which is like key to this whole conspiracy. Is they have to figure out what the different signal is when there's a runner on second, because they switch it up because they know they're being watched. But they like, they nod their head or shake their head, and then they pitch. You know, the "no, no, no, yes, that one," and then they pitch. I want to see a pitcher just like shrug once. Just be like, "Nah, I don't know." Not like nod, not shake their head. Shruggie. No. Nah, I don't know. Just a shrug. And then the Apple Watch guy gets a shruggy emoji. Yeah. Anyway, a great story. I'm very excited because Apple is definitely gonna reference it at their event.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Think so.

• 9:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the dad joke of some kind is coming. People are finding all kinds of uses for the Apple Watch and put up the Red Sox logo.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, but Apple also doesn't really like to admit that illegal activities exist in the world.

• 10:07Nilay Patel?

  No, but they make weed jokes now, every single mag. Weed's legal.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  But it's pretty legal now.

• 10:12Nilay Patel?

  Some places. Yeah, that's true. But that, it's also just, that's just Fred, Federighi.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  I don't know. That's interesting. That's an interesting bet. Will Apple reference?

• 10:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  I guess it's not super illegal. It's just a funny sports rule.

• 10:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's not like, no one's going to jail for this.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  It's not like they're using their Apple Watch to track their steroid usage.

• 10:32Nilay Patel?

  Is there a baseball jail? And can you go to it? That's a story for you.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  I thought the dugout was the baseball jail.

• 10:39Nilay Patel?

  All right, all right. Those are the two particularly silly stories of the week. But before we get into all the other stuff, Galaxy Note 8 review hit this week. It was, Dan wrote it.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  Dan did the review?

• 10:52Nilay Patel?

  I will say this, I, you know, he had it in the office, I was like looking at it. My first instinct with that phone was this thing is massive. And then I was like, it's actually not that big. It's only a little bit bigger than the S8. He showed me his S8, which is true. It's only a little bit bigger than the surfboard iPhone 7 Plus that I'm carrying around. And I, you know, obviously what's happening, iPhones are getting smaller. So it's only a little bit bigger than the biggest phones. And then Dan is like, well, this phone is huge. Like, once you use it for a while, the size of it starts to actually dominate your usage. It's like, only a little bit bigger than the S8. And he tweeted, the specs, it's bigger than the S8 in a way that the specs do not imply. I mean, that is like fascinating, like the, the Note has always pushed the boundary of how big a phone can be.

• 11:37Nilay Patel?

  And phones have just sort of followed along in its wake. Have we, have we hit the like, the peak?

• 11:42Speaker 02

  I mean, we've had bigger phones before.

• 11:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  But I think this phone in particular is the phone where like you give up on any sort of, I don't know, idea that you're going to use this as one hand. Like, you don't get a Note and pretend that, yeah, it's just like any other phone, it's just a little bigger, I'll figure it out. No, you're, you're using two hands. You're using two hands to unlock it because the other options aren't that good. You're using two hands because you're pulling the stylus out. He's using two hands, it's just a big giant phone. But the nice thing is that it's a big giant phone that actually takes advantage of being a big giant phone. Whereas the, you know, the 7 Plus surfboard just feels dopey because it's got those giant bezels.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  So, so, speaking of bezels, Jake, I hope he's published this by now, I'm not spoiling it for, with Jake of Juicero fame.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  Jake Giuseppe.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Jake Giuseppe was writing about the Essential Phone for our website, theverds.com. And he's, he mentioned that because there's no bezel, the home button, the software home button on Android ends up being lowered in the hand than it normally is. And so that he thought he'd be having more, you know, the phone is overall smaller because it doesn't have bezels. But it was awkward for his thumb to get down to that home. But have you experienced that, either of you?

• 13:03Speaker 02

  No.

• 13:04Nilay Patel?

  No, because I have a Pixel. So that has a giant surfboard bezel.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:10Nilay Patel?

  You know, it struck me with a note, so Oreo finally hit my Pixel, which is great. It showed me a bunch of fake notifications for like a day and arrived. Oreo is great. Like, I really like it, but it is apparent to me now, we-

• 13:25Speaker 02

  Can you tell the difference between Oreo and Nougat? Like, I can because I, you know, I'm a nerd and I'm trying to, you know, write the review. Uh, I'm doing a bad job of it. Vergecast edition, I admit that I'm working on an article and now I'm forced to finish it.

• 13:39Nilay Patel?

  You're doomed to publish work on the website.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:42Nilay Patel?

  Only, like, the, the things that leap out to me on the Pixel, and they, the only things that are obvious is the notification shade is different, they're reorganized. I really like how they stick the unimportant notifications in that little secret tray under the main notifications. And obviously it's white and not black. That's the stuff that I think most people would pick up on. What I've picked up on the most is how much faster it feels. It's just a lot smoother. Like, the, the performance of the phone is evened out in a way that I really appreciate. And everything is a little, like, nipped and tucked. But if you're not looking for it, you're never gonna see it. But what that indicated to me- Which I think is interesting, because we've given Samsung a lot of shit for TouchWiz over

• 14:26Nilay Patel?

  the years. Samsung has accomplished refinement on top of a platform that wasn't refined for a long time. And now I think Oreo is up there. So it's what the value of TouchWiz on the Note 8 is like, all these other crazy Samsung features, which is always what we have thought of as the value of TouchWiz, the value in quotes. But really, now that I'm playing with Oreo, it feels a lot tighter to me. It's clear that like, the work Samsung has done on the S8 and the Notes is actually solving some of that performance stuff.

• 14:57Speaker 02

  Uh, I mean, maybe.

• 15:00Nilay Patel?

  Not solving performance, solving some of the polish.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I could see that. I would, I would suggest to you that before you make that point too strongly, you use the Pixel for six months and see if it still feels as buttery.

• 15:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, that's like, I got a clean install of an operating system, it's great. Yeah, I mean, you know, all the stuff that Google's doing with like, Project Treble to re-architect how all of Android works, all that stuff to me seems fascinating, but it's, it's got to pay off, and I don't know if it's going to pay off.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  So Ron Amadeo did his, you know, 20,000-word review last weekend, and he's made some really interesting points about Project Treble and how it could possibly make it easier to distribute custom ROMs, because all the work that needs to go into making the silicon work with it, the OS is now like modularized and compartmentalized, so that they could just, you could theoretically make a ROM for one phone, and it would work on any phone that is supported in Oreo's silicon code, which is fascinating. And then, but the, the other thing is, the background stuff that they're doing to shut down apps and make them just behave better, is going to take a while. Because apps actually have to target Oreo to follow those rules, and they can still

• 16:12Speaker 02

  ignore them for now. You can go in, deep into the settings, and start forcing those rules on older apps that may or may not break them. But it's going to take, it's going to take a while for both Treble and these background processes to actually make a significant difference once you've got your phone loaded up with apps. The thing I'm not looking forward to...

• 16:35Speaker 02

  Is you know how the new version of Android comes out and then for the next six months, we say, oh, this phone come up, but it doesn't have the new version of Android yet. When's it gonna get it? And then they give us a timeline and then we see if they stick to the timeline and they never do and blah, and we just have all the things. Oh, when's the first actual new Oreo phones? When's the new stuff coming out? We've done this every year, right?

• 16:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  For eight years, however long it's been. This year, not only do we have to ask, will your phone get Oreo? We have to ask, will your phone get Oreo and be treble-ized? Because treble is a system for engineer, a system to like force everybody that makes Android stuff to make it more easily upgradable by modularizing the stuff, right? But if you are upgrading from seven to eight, you don't have to like buy into that whole modular system. They're giving everybody a pass. And so a bunch of phones are gonna get Oreo, but they're not gonna be quote unquote treble-ized, which means that they're not going to be on the faster upgrade path to Android nine when that happens.

• 17:38Nilay Patel?

  Sounds delightful, but won't every new phone?

• 17:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:41Nilay Patel?

  Have treble?

• 17:41Speaker 02

  Every new phone should be like strict to the

• 17:44Speaker 01

  If it ships with Oreo, it should be treble.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  Treble-ized, yep.

• 17:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so we've got one round of flagships happening now that probably won't, is my guess.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 17:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But back to the note eight, we got way off track here.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  Treble, man. I'm pretty excited.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  Treble. It's treble.

• 18:02Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God. That's Verchess, everybody. We'll see you in San Francisco.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  I kinda want this live message thing.

• 18:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and like the

• 18:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's my favorite part.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  The little thing where you draw with the

• 18:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  Message like

• 18:16Nilay Patel?

  And it animates when you send it as a gift to people.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  It's a gif, so it's usable in the world.

• 18:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, not like Apple's weird digital touch stuff, which I would point out, launched to extraordinarily great fanfare.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  I was so excited about it.

• 18:31Nilay Patel?

  And I have never seen one again, basically. I can't even find the little, you know their little creepy character?

• 18:37Speaker 02

  The creepy character?

• 18:38Nilay Patel?

  When the Apple Watch first came out, there was like the little creepy face.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  Little creepy face?

• 18:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it was like, it was like an animated smiley face.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  Oh, that guy.

• 18:45Nilay Patel?

  His name was Thirsty. They gave him a nickname on the site.

• 18:47Speaker 02

  Thirsty.

• 18:48Nilay Patel?

  Uh, just gone, just disappeared. Someone tweeted at me and Lauren today that last year at the iPhone event, when they did the new Apple Watch stuff, they're like, "We're partnered with Nike and every Sunday is just do it Sunday." And that's, that's gonna, and they made all this fanfare about it. Uh, it's just one of those things, it's like, all these announcements come and they wash away and what's left is what's good, which is fine, but the live message thing on, on the Note feels like one of those things as well, where it's like, super fun to play with, and it's a little bit more accessible, but it's gonna fade away. The thing I love is because it's an OLED screen, you can write notes on the lock screen and save them as notes on the lock screen,

• 19:29Nilay Patel?

  and then when you look at the phone, the notes are just there, kinda like dim, so it's like a piece of paper. That's cool. Yeah, note stuff. It's just like a lot of note stuff.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  The one thing that is not great, I think is like the, you buy the Note because you want a big phone and you want a stylus, but there's plenty of other big phones, this was Dan's point. You shouldn't buy the phone because you think the dual camera thing is awesome.

• 19:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 19:51Speaker 02

  Cause it's fine.

• 19:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, I like that you can change the focus, you can like, play with it. They like, let you into it.

• 19:58Speaker 02

  After the fact.

• 19:59Nilay Patel?

  They let you into it a little bit more, which is neat.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  I'll tell you what I hate about it, um, it's not the default camera mode, because the, when you do a live focus on, uh, on the Note, it takes the wide angle, it saves a telephoto, it saves all the data, lets you do the blurry stuff, and it just ends up being huge. And as far as I'm concerned, if, if your camera gimmick isn't the default, then get it out of my face, I'm never gonna use it. This is why I get mad at motion stills. It's not that, it's a separate camera app and a separate mode that you gotta go find. But it's delightful on the iPhone because it's just there for the stuff and you just find that, oh, look, I have little gifts everywhere. That I didn't know I had. So I hate that you have to turn the mode on.

• 20:43Speaker 02

  I hate that you've got to like check to see if it's you're taking it the special version of the shot. It's just frustrating.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Um, the photos do look good, though.

• 20:51Nilay Patel?

  The iPhone portrait mode isn't a default.

• 20:53Speaker 02

  No, that's what I'm saying. Like, and even live photos aren't necessarily default. Like, all that stuff is annoying. Uh, but on the iPhone, if you if you turn on, on the iPhone, if you turn on live photo, it's just stays on.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  Pretty much stays whatever you pick.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  On Samsung, if you turn on things and then you leave and then the app closes in the background, the camera app closes in the background. When you come back to it, you've got to turn it on again. You can't just toggle it permanently.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  The photos look nice.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's Samsung makes good cameras now. It's the S8 camera. I mean, what do you want?

• 21:22Nilay Patel?

  And they've added a gimmick. I think the real question now is, okay, dual cameras are going to be a thing. They seem to be coming to all the phones in one way or another. It's the battle between, do you have the normal lens in the wide angle or the normal lens in the telephoto? Apple's.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  Or the normal in the black and white.

• 21:44Nilay Patel?

  Well, I think that that to me is the the value of having a different focal length is like clear that. Like, I like switching to the zoom lens on the iPhone, and I think it's neat to have a wide angle lens.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  So we we had basically regular cameras, then we had take multiple images at different exposures really fast. So you have like fake HDR. Now phones are faking depth of focus or depth of field.

• 22:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  What what do they give? What what's the hot? And then there's Instagram style filters to fake like old film looks. Like, what's what's the hot thing that nobody's faking yet?

• 22:22Nilay Patel?

  Interchangeable lenses.

• 22:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'm with you. Like, we're just faking our way back to DSLR.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just find it really interesting. I remember, like, I had a friend who's like, like, a big LiveJournal person, who was putting those Instagram filters on photos before there was such a thing as Instagram, before the iPhone existed, you know? Like, there's just things that we find really aesthetically pleasing. It always blows me away. Like, when I first heard of the iPhone doing this fake depth-of-field stuff, I was like, that's gonna be terrible.

• 22:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  But it's really pleasing.

• 22:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  It's just so nice. And it bugs me that it gets me that well, but it really does.

• 23:00Nilay Patel?

  I think that James Barham, our creative director, ages and ages ago, wrote a piece for us that did really well about how the iPhone photography revolution is about display and capture being collapsed. So you take a picture on the iPhone, you view it on an iPhone, you probably take another picture on the same device you're viewing it on. And that's great, and it's created an entirely new kind of creativity. You make a portrait mode picture big, and you can see where it's failing.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 23:30Nilay Patel?

  Right? And I think that they have to either ignore it, because they know the primary, the primary display of the photos is on the phone. So it looks great on the phone. But the second you push any one of these photos to any other kind of medium, to my eye, they tend to fall apart. And I know that all the companies do the billboards and whatever, but even that, to me, feels like a trick.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:53Nilay Patel?

  Because you can take any photo and make it huge, and then put it two miles away from your eyes, and it'll look fine. So I, yeah, I think that's like the, that's the goal, right? If you're gonna replace the DSLR, or the mirrorless camera, or whatever, you have to actually make the fakery as good as the real thing. And I think they're, I don't know if they're gonna layer on more fake things. I think they've now set up a pretty enormous challenge, where if you're gonna, like, take a bunch of your wedding photos in portrait mode, and then you print them out. Like you're gonna notice that you didn't, they're not quite as good. They look great on the phone and I think that's, like I said, James wrote an entire piece about how that's the revolution.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, when's the last time you printed a photo?

• 24:37Nilay Patel?

  I make photos big all the time. Like I, you look at them on my laptop and like, we use, we, you know, we like run a media organization.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 24:48Nilay Patel?

  I look at photos, click massive sizes all the time. And that's what I mean, that the revolution is most people take and view the media on the same device, which has not ever been true before. So like-

• 24:59Speaker 02

  But, but like Paul's point is, if you're, if you're making and viewing it on the device, you should be making new kinds of photos that feel native and interesting on that device. That's why, I mean, HTC did Zoey, but Apple did Live Photo. It's why I love motion still so much. You're taking advantage of the technology of viewing the photos that's better than, or more interesting than, you know, a print.

• 25:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  And I would like to see more attempts to create stuff that isn't trying to mimic a DSLR, but that's trying to create a new way to experience photography on a phone because that's where everybody's looking at them anyway.

• 25:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, I, I do think that's where like Live Photos comes in. But just to play the, I don't know, cranky old person, is my role in this world. There's something still evocative about like a great still photo. And that's still the thing, you know, that all of the photo sharing apps and services are still built around. And like, you know, Instagram, you know, there used to be like the hard sort of line where you don't put your DSLR photos on Instagram. That line is gone.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 26:12Nilay Patel?

  Right?

• 26:13Speaker 01

  Well, and, and the Instagram filters kind of wear out their welcome. And I'm assuming most of these tricks will kind of wear out their, I feel like HDR was in vogue for a bit and is less cool now.

• 26:24Nilay Patel?

  Well, HDR, it's, the way Apple does it, you know, you like light it up and turn it on, it's HDR.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 26:30Nilay Patel?

  The way Google does it, it's just always kind of working to make everything better. It's faded into the background. And I think that's, that's really cool. Cause they're, they're, they're doing yet another trick to fake the dynamic range of a better camera. Like, I don't know if you could call Google's HDR like high dynamic range. It's more like dynamic range.

• 26:51Nilay Patel?

  They've just added some to it. They're not, they're not pushing it to that crazy HDR place. Anyway, that was our conversation with a Note 8, which is a phone that you can buy. Last thing, Dieter, I want to ask you. The Note 8 is really, really expensive.

• 27:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:06Nilay Patel?

  Is it going to be more or less expensive than this presumably very expensive iPhone Pro.X Edition?

• 27:12Speaker 02

  Uh, I think Brian Chen, New York Times, uh, threw out there that the new iPhone is going to start at $999. And I believe it.

• 27:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  So, less expensive.

• 27:21Nilay Patel?

  That's something. This, the phone price war is, I think we're going to have to spend a lot of time talking about it. Once we have all these numbers in hand. But it's ex-

• 27:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was on Lauren's excellent podcast, Too Embarrassed to Ask, talking about the Note, uh, with her and Kara. And I, I made the point that I think I've made to y'all before, uh, that we don't know what the diff- what a pro phone means yet. We know what a pro laptop means. We know why you spend extra money to get a Mac, MacBook Pro instead of just a MacBook. Uh, but I don't think anybody really knows, other than it's nicer and has a slightly better camera, what it means to get a pro phone that actually enables you to do, you know, quote unquote, "pro" things that you can't do on a cheaper phone.

• 28:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I've pretty much determined, I'll have to see you next week. Maybe I'll just be so blown away. I can't help myself. But I don't think I'm a pro phone person.

• 28:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  I don't, the phone for me is listening to podcasts and watching YouTube videos. And it's, it doesn't need to be the most expensive gadget in, in my bag.

• 28:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, I, this is, comes down to the content, consumption, creation divide, right? Which is, you kind of use your phone, I mean, I guess we're just talking about photos, but you, you use your phone to consume so many things and to create very little. And it seems like your energy, that pro money goes towards, this is the thing I use to make things and it should be the best and most flexible tool. But, I mean, we spent how many episodes of the show talking about tablets and iPads and laptops versus tablets and their merging and like, it's the problem that everyone's trying to solve and I'm excited to see Apple's riff on what a super expensive iPhone looks like.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 29:08Nilay Patel?

  And I guarantee you, they will sell as many of them as they can make. Cause that's just their way.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:13Nilay Patel?

  By the way, do you think it's gonna be, do you think it's gonna be called the Pro, the X, the Edition?

• 29:18Speaker 02

  Uh, I think it's gonna be called the Eight.

• 29:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 29:21Speaker 02

  iPhone Eight.

• 29:21Nilay Patel?

  Okay, well, here's what's gonna happen.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  This'll be old news by the time you're hearing the sound of my voice, but you guys should know that Equifax was hacked and 143 million consumers may have had their data leaked and the leaked data includes names, social security numbers, birthdays, addresses, income instances, and driver's license numbers.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Well, dang it.

• 29:41Nilay Patel?

  Wow. Everyone changed their identity.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 29:45Nilay Patel?

  My na- my name is now Steve.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, Equifax would just pay for people to have like a life do-over now.

• 29:50Nilay Patel?

  You're starting over. You're a carpenter now.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Be who you wanna be.

• 29:56Nilay Patel?

  Okay, here's what's gonna happen. I'm gonna read this ad, then, uh, this week was the last episode of Spacecraft, Lauren Grush. I'm gonna talk to her for about 15 minutes, and then we're gonna come back and we're gonna do all the iPhone stuff. You ready? Yeah. This episode of Vergecast brought to us, brought to us, this episode of Vergecast brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Thanks ZipRecruiter. Are you hiring? Do you know where to post your job to find the best candidates? With ZipRecruiter, you can post your job to 100+ job sites with just one click. Then their powerful technology efficiently matches the right people to your job better than anyone else. That's why ZipRecruiter is different. Unlike other job sites, ZipRecruiter doesn't depend on candidates finding you, it finds them. In fact, 80% of employers who post a job on ZipRecruiter get quality candidate through the site within one day.

• 30:41Nilay Patel?

  There's no juggling emails or calls to your office, you just screen, rate, and manage candidates all in one place with ZipRecruiter's easy-to-use dashboard. So find out today what ZipRecruiter has been used by businesses of all sizes to find those qualified job candidates with immediate results. Right now, Vergecast listeners can post jobs on ZipRecruiter for free, that's right, free. Just go to ziprecruiter.com/verge. That's ziprecruiter.com/verge. One more time, try for free. Go to ziprecruiter.com/verge.

• 31:11Nilay Patel?

  Lauren.

• 31:12Speaker 03

  Neelai.

• 31:12Nilay Patel?

  My favorite astronaut.

• 31:14Speaker 03

  Oh, that's disappointing because I'm not one.

• 31:16Nilay Patel?

  Also, I don't know any others.

• 31:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:18Nilay Patel?

  So.

• 31:18Speaker 03

  So.

• 31:19Nilay Patel?

  But you're my favorite astronaut. It works out.

• 31:21Speaker 03

  I'm glad it worked out.

• 31:22Nilay Patel?

  Uh, so I'm a little sad because you've been on the show for the past month.

• 31:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it's been fun.

• 31:28Nilay Patel?

  It's been great, uh, but spacecraft season one has come to an end, but with like a huge flourish at the end.

• 31:34Speaker 03

  I don't think we could have ended it any better.

• 31:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. What other experiences do you have left?

• 31:40Speaker 03

  I guess I should go home forever.

• 31:42Nilay Patel?

  You should go to space.

• 31:44Speaker 03

  The only thing to do now.

• 31:45Nilay Patel?

  But first of all, congratulations on spacecraft season one. Really exciting. I think everyone loved it. I loved it. Um, and you got to experience some zero G.

• 31:54Speaker 03

  I did. Um, yeah, I went on a parabolic flight, which is nicknamed the vomit comet. And it's something I've always wanted to do, um, especially because my mom got to do it.

• 32:06Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 32:06Speaker 03

  When she was working at NASA. And it just, it was absurd to me that she got to do this super cool thing and I didn't get to do it. Especially because if you know my mother, she is not like a big roller coaster person. She isn't like,

• 32:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 32:19Speaker 03

  Um, intense things. So the idea that she actually went on this was insane to me, but she told me, if you've watched the video, she had like the worst time on it. So my goal was just to survive at least more parabolas than she did.

• 32:37Nilay Patel?

  So when your mom did it, presumably some time ago, it was actually part of NASA.

• 32:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, they were testing out some new technologies that needed to go to space. And I believe at the time NASA owned its own parabolic plane. They don't anymore. Um, but yeah, they got to go on it and it looks, if you look at the pictures of it, the inside of it looks kind of like, like a sterilized, you know, hospital.

• 33:08Nilay Patel?

  That's like a padded room.

• 33:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a padded room with this huge bulky technology in it. It's very retro looking for sure.

• 33:16Nilay Patel?

  But the flight you went on is not part of NASA. It's like a private company.

• 33:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's the Zero G Corporation and they're one of just a handful of planes that do it nowadays. And they are, they're pros, you know, they, they're, they're basically the main, if not the only company in the US that's offering this. I think it might be the only company in the US that offers this. Uh, yeah, they do, um, research, you know, flights. They do, you know, tourist flights. Most, I think that's like their bread and butter is these tourist flights. And yeah, uh, it's, you know, a once in a lifetime thing and always wanted to do it. And you guys let me do it, so I did.

• 33:56Nilay Patel?

  Wait, this is their business?

• 33:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is their business. That's, that was-

• 33:59Nilay Patel?

  How big is this company?

• 34:00Speaker 03

  Uh, not very big. I would say basically the bulk of the company was on the flight with us. That was what was neat about it was I talked with, um, a wonderful woman named Chelsea when we were setting this up and she was like my liaison for the majority of this time. And then she went on the flight with us.

• 34:19Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 34:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was her and like basically the entirety of the company was on the flight. And they were your, she continued to being our liaison when I was floating off into the ether. She grabbed my leg and pulled me back down and made sure I didn't, you know, bump in and run into people. So they're pros, I mean, they've been, they fly all the time. Like they're constantly going to different airports and doing this every couple of weeks, you know?

• 34:42Nilay Patel?

  Is it just a bunch of friends in a plane? How do you, it's like, I want to know more about this company, but let's talk about space.

• 34:47Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 34:48Nilay Patel?

  Uh, so you presumably have not experienced weightlessness before.

• 34:53Speaker 03

  I have not, no. I've been in pools.

• 34:56Nilay Patel?

  I'm assuming most people haven't.

• 34:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:58Nilay Patel?

  Um, what was it like?

• 35:00Speaker 03

  It was, I really, I say this on the video a lot, it's really hard to describe and I know that's such a cop out, but it is, I mean, you just, all of a sudden, you take a turn and the floor you were looking down at is now above you and it's just, and you don't experience, obviously, any kind of, you know, your perspective changes, but your body doesn't feel like it's changing perspective at all, you know? So, it really can get very disorienting very quick, but yeah, it's just, it was just an insane feeling to just, "Oh, I'm sitting on the top of the plane now." And then, I really, like, they want you to get down on the floor in between the parabolas

• 35:45Speaker 03

  so that you don't, you know, puke. Um, because you have to pull extra G's between parabolas. And, uh, a lot of times, they'd be like, you know, "Get down, get on the floor." And I'd be like, "I don't know where that is, like, I'm really not sure." So, to get your bearings, once you're in zero G, it's very, it's very tough to do.

• 36:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I would like to also call out our heroic director, Miriam Nielsen, who was, had to shoot, you were just like goofing.

• 36:15Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 36:15Nilay Patel?

  You're just like flying around and she had to run a camera.

• 36:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, fortunately for her, I mean, they have a dedicated photographer on their flight too, so there's extra video and photos that they, that he took as well. And he was giving her pointers beforehand. And they also have like handrails and stuff that you can hold on to in case you want to stabilize yourself, so I think she utilized those a lot. But yeah, the best part was, they, like I was saying, they tell you to get down on the floor for the, the extra G's, but she was like standing up, kneeling, you know, she was getting footage of me being good while she was standing during the extra G portion. I was like, "Jesus Christ, that is impressive."

• 36:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, heroism.

• 36:55Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 36:55Nilay Patel?

  So, you got to do, first it was... Martian than Mars.

• 37:00Speaker 03

  Yes, yeah, first they start you off easy, so.

• 37:02Nilay Patel?

  I'm sorry, lunar than Mars, right? Or the other way around?

• 37:04Speaker 03

  Uh, Mars first, cause it's one-third, and then two lunar parabolas, which are one-sixth gravity, and then the rest are, um, zero G. And, yeah, those were, they, they got you kind of like acclimated. It just felt very, you felt like you were on a cloud for a little bit. And then when you get to the zero G, you're just like, what am I doing? I think the, the best part was when I lost control. There's a shot in the video where I'm just like, bounce off the floor, and then I like, tumble to the back of the plane, and there's nothing I can do about it, cause I can grab on to somebody, or I could, you know, grab on to the wall, but I was too far away from the wall to do anything, so it was pretty funny to just watch me kind of fly away.

• 37:47Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I personally enjoyed the fact that you got super competitive with just yourself, in insisting that you wanted to do a flip.

• 37:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. And then the first time I tried to do it, I didn't even, well, I didn't even push off anything, so I didn't really do much. And then, I think at the end, they showed me trying to like, eat those candies, and I was really bad at it. And the, they, so they have another number of tricks that.

• 38:08Nilay Patel?

  Explain eat the candies.

• 38:09Speaker 03

  Oh, oh, so like, one thing you can do is throw up candy and then try to like, catch it in your mouth by yourself. But I was not good at that. And I was actually pretty bad at all of the tricks that they tried to get us to do. Like, there was, they'd do one where they want to do like, a Superman shot, where they have everybody line up at the back of the plane, and then as soon as the parabola, or as soon as you start to get, you know, weightless, then you all push off, and you're like, with your arms outstretched, and you look like Superman. Everybody did it, and I just stayed on the floor. Like, I just did not do it well, it looked really bad.

• 38:46Nilay Patel?

  So, now that you've had this experience, by the way, did anybody vomit on the phone comment?

• 38:52Speaker 03

  Oh, so many people did, and I don't.

• 38:53Nilay Patel?

  How was that managed?

• 38:54Speaker 03

  That was the grossest part. So, um, well, they handled it very well. Obviously, they're pros at this.

• 39:00Nilay Patel?

  This happens all the time.

• 39:01Speaker 03

  But the best.

• 39:03Nilay Patel?

  That's how you get a nickname.

• 39:04Speaker 03

  Sorry, I hope they don't hate me for talking about this, but the best is that, uh, the, I mean, obviously the vomit goes everywhere.

• 39:14Speaker 03

  So I, when we got back to like a, we leveled off a couple of times, a little extra time. Normally you do a couple of levels in between the parables just to get everybody, um, you know, give them a break, but we leveled off a, a little bit more than we were supposed to just to help these, these sick people. Um, but yeah, when we leveled off one time, I just saw, you know, one of the employees wiping off the wall and then wiping off the ceiling and then wiping off the floor. Like there, the vomit made everywhere. Like, and then they would run to the back of the plane, get some splushes down there.

• 39:51Nilay Patel?

  Oh, wow.

• 39:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:53Nilay Patel?

  Was the vomit ever weightless with you?

• 39:55Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. The best was when, one time we leveled off and I just watched it come from the ceiling down to the floor.

• 40:03Speaker 03

  It was okay. I didn't vomit.

• 40:04Nilay Patel?

  A once in a lifetime experience.

• 40:06Speaker 03

  I felt so bad because it was this, uh, you know, these, this one family and, you know, if you think about it, that's your one experience to do it unless, I don't know if they give you like a discount to come back. Like, sorry you, uh, you bombed on this trip.

• 40:21Nilay Patel?

  Oh, no.

• 40:22Speaker 03

  You have a, have a half off ticket for your next ride.

• 40:25Nilay Patel?

  You, you have to earn a nickname like the vomit comment. It's basically my feeling. I was thinking about, I'm like, I love roller coasters and rides, but you know the ride where they just spin you around?

• 40:37Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 40:37Nilay Patel?

  And like you get pinned to the wall?

• 40:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:39Nilay Patel?

  That one always wrecks me.

• 40:40Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, that's essentially like a centrifuge.

• 40:43Nilay Patel?

  Right. I mean, it basically is.

• 40:44Speaker 03

  So that kind of, that's the feeling that, well, I mean, that probably wasn't as intense as what we were feeling, but we feel, feel about 1.8 Gs. Maybe it is. I don't know. But yeah, you feel about close to two Gs when you're, so you're doing these parables, right? We explained in the video. And yeah, it basically feels like this mattress where someone's like pressing down on your body. And that part actually was kind of fun for me. I liked it. But yeah, I think the, the going back and forth between that and the weightlessness definitely took its toll by the end of the flight.

• 41:17Nilay Patel?

  Did you come, did you come close?

• 41:18Speaker 03

  I didn't come close, but I remember just sitting, I was standing there and I was like, okay. I can handle about two more of these and I think I'm, I might need to like sit down for one of them. And then they're like, "All right, we're done!" I was like, "Yeah, I'm okay with that."

• 41:36Nilay Patel?

  Alright, so let's talk about, so the experience sounds amazing.

• 41:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:40Nilay Patel?

  How much does it cost? Like, regular people do it?

• 41:42Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, it's usually about five grand. Yeah. And then you can pay extra if you want to fly with celebrities and stuff. There was, there was a flight going up to fly with William Shatner in Vegas, seemed like a good time.

• 41:53Nilay Patel?

  All of this, we should just profile this company. Anyway, so that is amazing, so you had like an amazing experience. But talk about the science of this, like what is there, is there something you can learn from it? Is there something NASA learned from it when they were doing it, where they're just testing equipment? And now, what, they have the ISS, so they can just put the equipment there? Like, what, what is the sort of the science of understanding weightlessness?

• 42:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I think when it comes to astronauts, it's not necessary, I think, in order to do it, you know. A fun fact was Scott Kelly was on our flight, who did one year in space.

• 42:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:25Speaker 03

  And so he was constant, we were, he was a good source to compare what it really felt like. And he was actually saying that the, the flight is worse because you are going back and forth for these two states of gravity. And whereas in space, you're just, you go from extra Gs during launch and then you're in space. You know, it's, it's not a constant transition. So, I think it's good for astronauts, maybe if they want to understand what it feels like, just temporarily, just get a taste. So, they'll understand, you know, you can't really maneuver in the same ways as you can on Earth to fix things. However, I think a real good opportunity for this is testing out these new technologies. So, I did a story a couple of months ago about this new type of robot

• 43:10Speaker 03

  uh, that they're developing to get rid of space trash. And the way it works is it uses, it's inspired by gecko feet, how they stick to walls. It uses the same kind of principles to stick to... Hardware, so you stick to the hardware and then you can drag it wherever you want and then you can potentially clean up space debris in orbit. But the only way to test it out before going to space is to see if it would actually work in a zero-gravity environment. So they put it on one of these parabolic flights. Sure enough, it worked just fine in zero G.

• 43:42Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 43:43Speaker 03

  So it's really just a way to quickly test out things that, just to see if they would operate in zero G like the way that you want them to before actually sending them to space.

• 43:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 43:54Speaker 03

  Which is, uh, way, five grand seems like a lot for you and me, but it's way less expensive than launching a rocket.

• 44:01Nilay Patel?

  So last week, you were on the show.

• 44:02Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 44:02Nilay Patel?

  We talked a lot about how hard astronauts have to work out when they're weightless in order to just preserve their bodies, basically. Now you've experienced weightlessness.

• 44:13Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:13Nilay Patel?

  Do you have any, like, more reflection on the other experience of just how hard it is to be in that environment for more, for a long period of time?

• 44:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, I mean, even though you do get nauseous, I got nauseous on that flight, there's still nausea involved with going to space. It's not the same type, but it's a, it's space adaptation syndrome where you're, basically your body is like, "What the hell is going on right now? I don't know what the ceiling is, I don't know what the floor is." So your sense of balance is all turned off and so then you have like a sickness for the first couple of days that you come to space. So, on top of that, so you got all these physical challenges you gotta do, you got all these, you know, you basically have to retrain your brain to operate and work in the space environment. And then you got nausea, you got all these other things that you have to deal with, and I've also heard that, you know, you deal with fluid shift when you're in space too.

• 45:05Speaker 03

  So your body's fluids move around, they sit in your face and sometimes can make you feel like you have like... A sinus infection going on. You're not sick, though, but it just kind of feels like you're puffy. So there's all these different things, like, it's just, it's just an insane new work scenario. I'm just, like, I don't know if I said this in the last podcast, but so many people, you know, they talk about being advocates for regular people going to space. I'm all about that. I'm not saying that regular people shouldn't go to space, but if you're gonna live in a space environment, and you wanna, you know, work in orbit or whatever, it takes a lot. It takes a lot of training, a lot of effort.

• 45:51Speaker 03

  And I think it does a disservice to the astronauts and all the engineers that work on this to say that just anybody can go to space, no problem, as if you don't have to do all this planning beforehand. Because there is so much that you don't even think about that's gonna be thrust upon you in this new type of environment.

• 46:12Nilay Patel?

  It's almost like an environment that can kill you at any minute.

• 46:14Speaker 03

  It's almost like it. And then you think about it, too. I mean, a lot of the reason that astronauts are so healthy is because, think of what could happen if you have a medical emergency. We haven't had a medical emergency in space, but I was talking to someone who studies, like, the body in space, and she was saying, you know, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. The more people we put in space, the higher likelihood that somebody's gonna have a medical episode. When that happens, we have some techniques, like using ultrasound and stuff, to help them out, but if you have to evacuate to Earth, it's not a quick process, you know? So you don't want somebody that's gonna have, you know, a medical episode

• 46:57Speaker 03

  unless you have a floating hospital up there.

• 47:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:00Speaker 03

  And even then, it's hard to get all the things that you need up there in order to, you know, adequately treat somebody. So, moral minisnory. I'm not saying that...

• 47:10Nilay Patel?

  It's got dark, Lauren.

• 47:11Speaker 03

  No, I just wanna say that I, I have the most profound respect and appreciation for what it takes to go to space as an astronaut, and what it takes for people to send them to space and the effort that entails as well. So... I want everyone to go to space, but you're gonna have to work for it.

• 47:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:32Nilay Patel?

  So you've done these four episodes, you've had a taste of weightlessness, you've done a bunch of astronaut training, you've worn the spacesuit. What's like the bigger takeaway besides like it's difficult, right? Is there, is there something that you didn't understand when you went into it that you understand better now?

• 47:50Speaker 03

  I just, I love the fact that it seems there, it is such a multifaceted job. You know, we talked to a couple astronauts when we're down at the neutral buoyancy lab. And I was like, you know, what is this like a typical nine to five-iver? And he's like, no, it is different every single day because think about it. There are so many different aspects that they have to work on every single day. One day it's spacewalk training, one day they gotta work out. You know, one day they have to train for this lab experiment that they're doing. Like every day is different and that just seems, that was really cool. Cause that, it seems like the job just never gets old. And then at the end of it, your reward is going to space, you know? So like that's a, that's a pretty amazing job to have.

• 48:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so spacecraft season two.

• 48:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:34Nilay Patel?

  Will do. I'll say a greenlit next level season two.

• 48:38Speaker 03

  You should have seen Deli's like, do it.

• 48:41Nilay Patel?

  We should do it. I mean Lauren Good, when we were doing the next level podcast, she was like, are we gonna do it? And I was like, sure. So it's great, that one's greenlit.

• 48:48Speaker 03

  We'll do it.

• 48:49Nilay Patel?

  This one's greenlit too. What's, what are the next challenges? If we, if we do another season, like what are the things you want to line up and do?

• 48:56Speaker 03

  Well, I have an idea.

• 48:58Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 49:00Speaker 03

  So we talked about what it takes to get to space. What if we talked about what it takes to colonize another space?

• 49:06Nilay Patel?

  So now you have to go to space?

• 49:08Speaker 03

  Now I have, now I have to live.

• 49:10Nilay Patel?

  I see, I see the game you're playing.

• 49:11Speaker 03

  Now I have to live on Mars. You have to send me to Mars. Actually, I'd rather go to the moon first, if you know, if anyone knows me, they'll know that. But uh, yeah.

• 49:20Nilay Patel?

  You're really my friend.

• 49:22Speaker 03

  You're really my friend.

• 49:22Nilay Patel?

  You'll understand that I'm a lunar-

• 49:23Speaker 03

  I'm a moon stand first. Yeah, but I also want to hear input from people.

• 49:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 49:27Speaker 03

  Because that's, that's my idea, but I feel like a lot of people have ideas of what we can illustrate, and I'd be happy to take on those challenges.

• 49:35Nilay Patel?

  Or where can they get ahold of you?

• 49:37Speaker 03

  They can get ahold of me on my Twitter account, @LaurenGrush, L-O-R-E-N-G-R-U-S-H.

• 49:42Nilay Patel?

  Awesome. Well, it's been really fun having you on this show this month.

• 49:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:46Nilay Patel?

  Spacecraft was super fun.

• 49:48Speaker 03

  It was fun.

• 49:48Nilay Patel?

  Um, this is not a good metric, not a meaningful metric, but I think it's a fun one. Every one of your episodes that go on YouTube and you get like 4,000 likes and there'd be like 90 people who are like, "I, I don't like space." But like, having a bunch of YouTubers be really enthusiastic about something.

• 50:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:05Nilay Patel?

  I thought was great.

• 50:05Speaker 03

  I, I feel, I feel very empowered that the, the feedback was super positive, so, and I appreciate that. And it is, like I said, it's funny to see what people latch on to. Like in each episode, there's always something that people are like, "Wait, what? The sweat goes everywhere."

• 50:22Nilay Patel?

  There was a comment on the, on the vomit comet episode where someone was like, "This is how they green screen it." And I was like, like, that is a, you are way beyond conspiracy now. Now you are just, you're just insane.

• 50:35Speaker 03

  That was actually a cool part of doing the, the flight was, when we were done, they gave us a bunch of chips and then we talked about like, when they use the plane for videos and stuff. You know, like they're pros when it comes to production, so they have a bunch of celebrities fly. Uh, they do a lot of shoots there, so it was interesting to hear their experience. Like, they, obviously, they're, since they're like, if not the only company in US that does this, you know, they, everybody goes to them when they want to simulate zero G.

• 51:06Nilay Patel?

  So you're saying that is how they green screen it? Moon landing fake confirmed.

• 51:11Speaker 03

  No!

• 51:13Speaker 03

  I'm saying that they have used green screens in the plane.

• 51:16Nilay Patel?

  Oh no. We're down a dark rabbit hole here.

• 51:19Speaker 03

  I ruined everything.

• 51:19Nilay Patel?

  No, I, I just like the, the fact the audience was so into it, the fact that the show came out so great, and that you are obviously so passionate about space, I think all came together really well, so.

• 51:29Speaker 03

  Well, I'm happy to do it again, and I will gladly be put, put myself into crazy hijinks yet again for season two.

• 51:37Nilay Patel?

  We're definitely sending you to Mars. You know, the working title of the show was Lauren Goes to Space.

• 51:41Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 51:42Nilay Patel?

  We had to scrap it because we, the promise we just couldn't keep. Lauren actually never goes to space. But we're gonna get there.

• 51:50Speaker 03

  Do you remember we were out with Walt and we were talking? He was like, "How much does it cost to send you the international spaceship?" I was like, "Wow, it's like millions of dollars." He's like, "Let me look into this."

• 52:03Nilay Patel?

  So Walt, Walt's a dreamer. That Mossberg, only the highest of ambitions for us. Anyway, thank you so much for coming on.

• 52:09Speaker 03

  Thank you for having me.

• 52:10Nilay Patel?

  Spacecraft season two, sometime in the future.

• 52:12Speaker 03

  We'll do it.

• 52:12Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna happen. It's gonna be great. All right. Thanks, Lauren.

• 52:15Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 52:16Nilay Patel?

  About Lauren Grush, I gotta say, spacecraft, super fun. If you haven't watched it, go watch all four episodes now. And the one with her tumbling through zero G, very jealous of her career choices. We're like out here talking about phones, she's like flying through space.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  She, she bet on the right horse, the space horse.

• 52:35Nilay Patel?

  Good old space horse. We should get a horse.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  We should get a horse.

• 52:41Nilay Patel?

  All right, let's get into it. Next week, iPhone event, presume, I mean like, Apple's having an event. It's September.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:49Nilay Patel?

  One only assumes a new iPhone will be there.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  You'll never know, though.

• 52:53Speaker 02

  I think there's gonna be three.

• 52:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I, I, I'm feeling good about that.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  Three, three being a 7S, 7S Plus, and the 8 Pro X.

• 53:04Nilay Patel?

  And special.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Special.

• 53:06Nilay Patel?

  iPhone special. Yeah, I think that, that feels right. It kind of tracks with all the rumors. I, the real question is gonna be...

• 53:13Speaker 01

  There's, there's no new SE?

• 53:15Nilay Patel?

  Right, so that is not, I think, the real question, but it is yet another question that one could ask. No, I think the real question is, you know, they usually keep around the old one. So the 7 will get cheaper.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:28Nilay Patel?

  And then you'll get these S models, we think.

• 53:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 53:31Nilay Patel?

  And then there's the 8 or the Pro or whatever. Besides just like gluing a wireless charging pad on the back of the 7 and maybe giving it a processor bump? Like, what's gonna? What's, why would you buy that?

• 53:42Speaker 02

  Cameras are gonna be turned sideways.

• 53:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, sideways cameras, upside down. Now it's skinny, now it's fat. It's an iPod.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  Are they, are, is that the rumor that they're gonna put a wireless charger on the 7S?

• 53:55Nilay Patel?

  That is a rumor. It is a, I don't know if it's a

• 53:57Speaker 01

  Because they'd have to, they'd have to change the, the body as well to do that.

• 54:01Nilay Patel?

  Who knows? They saved all that room from the headphone jack.

• 54:03Speaker 01

  No, it's the, I mean, that's the whole reason why the, the 8 is supposed to have like a glass back.

• 54:09Nilay Patel?

  So I've seen, I've seen, there are leaks of the, of the 7 with a glass back. Yeah, so there's like rumors, but beyond that, functionality wise, I, I think the, the, the story of the 8 Pro X, I really wish we knew its name because it's very complicated. Let's call it the 8. Do you just wanna call it the 8? We're gonna call it the 8.

• 54:30Speaker 02

  I think it's, I think it's the 8, I really do. I think, they're not gonna call it the anniversary edition. Calling it the X is like, I don't know, I, I, I never wanna, uh, assume that Apple won't make a, a dad joke, you know, or like something that feels kinda, kinda corny. Um, but I just, it feels too corny to call it the iPhone X, you know? It just feels too lame.

• 54:54Nilay Patel?

  Now I'm 100% that they're gonna call it the X. They can't, if there's a corny dad jokes we make, Apple will make it.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  Here's something they could add to the 7S.

• 55:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  Every time you unlock it with Touch ID.

• 55:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  Like back in the olden days. You get a little push notification that reminds you like how little money you have in your bank account.

• 55:17Nilay Patel?

  Because you didn't buy the expensive one?

• 55:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're too poor for the good one.

• 55:22Nilay Patel?

  It's like it saves 5 cents a day for you. It's like you can get there.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  You'll get it next time.

• 55:26Nilay Patel?

  They're gonna buy one of those like Clarity or whatever that like auto saves money for you. Yeah, I, I think, I'm very curious how they're gonna tell this story.

• 55:33Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 55:34Nilay Patel?

  Right, because so much of it has been leaked. They obviously have flashy new hardware to show off, we, again, presume. And then they've got these like middle children. Right, so it's not, it's not the iPhone 7 now at a great low price. The middle children are going to be the only ones you can buy right away because the current rumors are that the flashy one won't be available for a month or two and it's going to be an extremely limited supply and so it's going to be hard to buy one even when it does become quote unquote available. So you're, there's going to be a whole thing where like you can get the cheap one that's basically the same as the new one except that it doesn't have wireless charging and you know, the slightly faster processor. Uh, or you can wait for the new one and who knows when you're going to be able to buy it or you know, we got these. They're, they're fine.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  I feel like the normal Apple way of doing this would just, just focus on the eight the whole time and then when they get to the price chart like, oh, and there's a 7S and we bumped the processor and it's got a better camera and stuff. It's fine.

• 56:31Nilay Patel?

  But if you're on, uh, if you're on AT&T Next, right, which is the terrible scam phone upgrade system that I'm on. The 7S is the one that you just, you're almost certainly just going to get, right? They're not going to give you the more expensive one. So like many more people are just going to get these S models. And the story of why this is another phone worth having beyond you have like a sucker paid installments to AT&T for the past two months. 24 months. They need a better story than that. So like it's got a faster processor. We changed the design and added wireless charge. I, I'm very curious. I, they're Apple. They are masters at delivering these messages. I am sure they will have a, a good, clean,

• 57:16Nilay Patel?

  somewhat persuasive message for the S to exist. I'm just super curious what it is because off the, I am not a master marketer. And off the top of my head, I couldn't tell you what it is. But then there's all this other stuff that's floating around. Did you see the OLED news today? So the Wall Street Journal is like, Apple desperately needs to find a supplier of OLED screens for these phones because they're dependent on Samsung. And they invested a bunch of money into LG's OLED production. But then there was an Ars Technic piece comparing the V30 to like the Samsung OLED. And the V30 screen is terrible.

• 57:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, how did Samsung?

• 57:51Speaker 02

  Well, that's because, well, see, Google also invested a bunch of money in LG. And maybe the V30 screen is terrible because they're saving all the good screens for Apple and for the Pixel.

• 58:00Nilay Patel?

  Maybe. You know, what I really don't understand, I would love for somebody to explain this to me. LG makes the best TVs. Their OLED TVs. I have one. It's great. Walt has one. He loves it. Great TVs. Like easily the best TVs you can buy are LG OLED TVs. Same panels in Sony's TVs. Sony's TVs hilariously more expensive, but whatever. OLED panels, great. LG, the clear, obvious winner. Samsung TVs are all LCDs, also the top of the market. But when you get to phones, it's the other way around. LG made all the best LCD displays for phones, including the one in the iPhone Forever. Samsung bet on OLED and makes all the best OLED screens. And I just want, is it like two brothers and they fought?

• 58:44Nilay Patel?

  And they like went their different ways? Like, I don't-

• 58:48Speaker 01

  Like John OLED and Jim OLED?

• 58:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Like, how are you really good at the big ones and not the little ones? And how are you really good at the little ones and not the big ones?

• 58:56Speaker 01

  The pixel density, it's gotta be a way different process. But one of the original promises with OLED was that it was going to be easier to manufacture.

• 59:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but if you are Samsung and you're really good-

• 59:09Speaker 01

  It does not seem to be that easy.

• 59:10Nilay Patel?

  Making like 4K OLED displays at five inches.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:13Nilay Patel?

  Why can't you just relax the pixel density and make a good OLED TV?

• 59:17Speaker 01

  Just get like a stretching machine.

• 59:19Nilay Patel?

  Just like chill out for a minute and try to make a good TV. I, it's just like a mystery. But it's amazing that we've arrived at this place where there's two primary display manufacturers with completely mirror image skillsets. And Apple is now having to be deeply in bed with Samsung again, after it was already deeply in bed with Samsung on processor manufacturing. Like, I don't think that's where Apple wants to be at all.

• 59:47Speaker 01

  No.

• 59:48Nilay Patel?

  And then on top of it, they're, you know, they have to price the phone higher so they can constrain supply against all this stuff. This is one of those stories, I think we talked about- Apple and Qualcomm. And if like that lawsuit goes sideways, like the whole industry changes. This Apple Samsung relationship around displays. They, they, Apple can't screw up its display partnerships. Like you can screw up your patent processor, processor patent partnerships. Great. Like, maybe that's nuclear for the entire industry.

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  No, no, they can make a screenless iPhone. It's just a big Siri button.

• 1:00:22Nilay Patel?

  But if the iPhone doesn't have the best display in the industry, like Apple seeded a lot of ground. Like fundamentally, to me, the iPhone retina display is still the cleanest screen in the industry. It has the best color reproduction. I still think OLED screen is like way over saturated. I know everybody disagrees with me. But if they, if they make this move and then they're not as good as Samsung, because Samsung is withholding its best parts for itself, that's like a big moment for Apple. Like, I think that's something for them to overcome and like, probably have to explain a little bit as they get into, well, we didn't sell as much of the expense, like, you know, they're gonna have an investor call in three months. Where they are gonna have to talk about component supply, because that's what they always talk about on those calls.

• 1:01:06Nilay Patel?

  And having literally the primary element of the phone in the hands of their best competitor, I think is just really fascinating to me. And I think this is why the essential phone still has an LCD.

• 1:01:17Speaker 02

  Apple just needs to make, they need, they need to pull a Samsung and they need to start making displays. They need to start making boats. They need to start making washing machines.

• 1:01:26Nilay Patel?

  And build them.

• 1:01:26Speaker 02

  It's all in the United States.

• 1:01:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they got the deal to put the Foxconn plant in Wisconsin. It only hits Sharp LCD TVs. Yeah, yeah, they were so close. Just, just a million miles away from what they need.

• 1:01:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I don't know. I, I just think it's, it's ultimately fascinating that, you know, Apple's thing is we're, we need to own or control our primary technologies. It's like a Steve Jobs line that they use a lot. And now they're, they're in this position where the primary technology of their phone is. They're in a fight to get more of it and their other supplier that they could use to leverage against Samsung is not, it doesn't appear to be ready for the task.

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  So as far as I could, as far as I could tell, almost all the OLED patents are owned by UDC, Universal Display Corporation, and it licenses them to Samsung and LG. So there's like no, I don't know what the big barrier to entry to jumping into this, other than it seems to be hard to make good OLEDs, but.

• 1:02:32Nilay Patel?

  LG is cranking out 65-inch OLEDs on the daily.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:02:37Nilay Patel?

  To make those smaller.

• 1:02:39Speaker 01

  Just because somebody does it well, doesn't mean it's easy to do it well, is what I'm saying.

• 1:02:44Nilay Patel?

  Hmm.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:02:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's just, I don't, it's just so confusing to me. They are well-known for making a product that no one else is actually able to make. Right? LG got to OLED first in TVs, they made them great, Sony gave up on OLED, they came back to OLED, they bought the panels from OLED. I get, it's probably a much lower volume product, but it's just the fact that they can't take all of that expertise and move it to the higher volume product suggests that there's something much harder than we're really talking about and that Samsung has just never even tried. Who knows? We can talk about OLEDs all night.

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  Sorry, we definitely can.

• 1:03:26Nilay Patel?

  Other stuff going on the phone, I think we're probably gonna hear a lot about Siri at this event. It's like, obviously an area of huge focus for Apple. Our friend David Pierce, notable Verge trader, just had an article in Wired about the work they've done to make Siri sound more human in Wired. Just go read it, it's good. So there's obviously like, they're priming the pump with Siri news, like the voice is better, they just, they have a machine learning blog now, do you see this piece?

• 1:03:56Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:03:57Nilay Patel?

  Apple has a machine learning blog, because they couldn't hire people because they wouldn't let them publish, so they started a blog for them.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  True story.

• 1:04:03Nilay Patel?

  Of course. So the reason they hired a bunch of researchers, the first white paper they published was like, how they're using machine learning to make the voice sound better and they're using like this cool hybrid approach. And it sounds way better. So I'm expecting we'll see some of that. I'm expecting they're going to take a bunch of shots at Alexa and Google Assistant around how complicated they are versus, you know, Siri, if you live a completely Apple life, can just do all the things. I think we'll probably see some HomePod.

• 1:04:30Speaker 02

  Well, it can do all the Apple things.

• 1:04:31Nilay Patel?

  Right. That's what I mean. If you live a completely Apple ecosystem life. Siri is like, yes, buy Siri, buy the most expensive phone. It's like, it's going to do it for you. I think we'll probably see here about the HomePod, I don't think it's ready yet, but I think that combination of Siri just being in all the products seems really interesting to me. And then there's a lot of noise around LTE Apple Watch, which.

• 1:04:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, that'll happen.

• 1:04:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. You're going to change the shape.

• 1:05:00Speaker 02

  And it'll be fine. Uh, the only evidence we have that they're going to change the shape is, John Gruber made an aside that a little birdie that was completely unconfirmed suggested that there was going to be a new form factor. LTE is a, you know, it's a radio. It's big. Presumably this will have an embedded SIM of some kind, so there won't need to be space for a micro SIM on it. Though I'm sure they will want it to have figured that out. They should make it, I don't know, maybe a little bit bigger in order to accommodate it, but maybe that they only want LTE to be like, you know, a sometimes thing, like, like Cookies for Cookie Monster.

• 1:05:39Speaker 02

  And, and so they, they'll just leave it the same and trust people to figure out that the battery life will get wrecked if you leave it on all the time.

• 1:05:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:48Speaker 02

  So yeah, I don't know. But the thing I'm more curious about is like, how many people are actually clamoring for an LTE, uh, Apple Watch? How many people are really like, yeah, no, I've, I see the potential on this thing on my wrist that I can leave my phone at home and never, never have to take it out. It's only there for like going to run.

• 1:06:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:08Speaker 02

  That's the only reason I think you'd want LTE on it.

• 1:06:11Nilay Patel?

  Well, that's why, I mean, they're leaning into fitness with the thing. So the combination of battery life and fitness use cases are in conflict with each other.

• 1:06:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. To me, the real genuine question with an LTE enabled Apple Watch is how much do you pay to have it get access to the network? Because every single carrier has got a little add-on plan for little extra devices like it, and they all cost, I don't know, 10 bucks a month, maybe 15? I have a hard time believing that I would want to pay. Sometimes it's more, it used to be more. The only carrier that doesn't charge for extra SIM cards is I think Project Five. Who knows how long Google's going to keep that thing running? But, you know, every carrier has to make sure that like it uses your same phone number and all of that stuff, how much extra it costs, making sure it uses the same phone number

• 1:07:03Speaker 02

  as your actual phone, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Means getting in tighter with carriers and their relatively crappy policies and services in a way that Apple has traditionally not had to. And I'm very curious to see if they've managed to, I don't know, wring any concessions out of any carriers, you know? Is this, is it going to be carrier specific? They didn't want to put all the radios in it, so it's, there's an AT&T version, a Verizon version, and a, you know, T-Mobile version? Or, you know, is it going to be a universal, you know, giant radio, in which case, or, you know, set of radios, in which case, maybe they do need to make it a little bit bigger? Lots of questions.

• 1:07:43Nilay Patel?

  Well, if they do LTE.

• 1:07:45Speaker 02

  If it's just LTE straight and they don't try and put a 3G radio in it, that might change it a little bit.

• 1:07:50Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:07:51Speaker 02

  We'll see. I don't know. Again, I think they did a really good job last time when they like rebooted the entire Watch interface of being like, here's what it does now. We're focused, it's a real product. Just adding LTE onto it. They need to kind of explain the value of that in another way. I think the reason I'm so excited about this event is Apple has so much explaining to do, and they're like, good at it. You know what I mean? Like, they have a lot of, here's the value of this. And like, I suspect they're more confident about what the value is than I've seen them. Like, when they, the first, the event that I keep thinking of is the first Apple Watch event, when it was like, chaos. Right?

• 1:08:34Speaker 02

  Like, Bono was there, and they're like, I don't know, like, now we're running in Africa because that's what the Apple Watch is for. And it was just like, all over the place. And Apple lately has just been very focused about, here's the value, here's why you spend the money on our product.

• 1:08:48Nilay Patel?

  So I think I'm excited, I'm just excited to like hear all those pitches. And then, you know, obviously we'll do what we do and see if they live up to the claims. But I think that's just an exciting moment. And then lastly, the poor sweet Apple TV.

• 1:09:00Speaker 02

  So when you're the biggest company on the planet and you're getting wrecked by an Amazon stick and Roku.

• 1:09:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:07Speaker 02

  Maybe you're not doing it right.

• 1:09:08Nilay Patel?

  Uh, yeah, I mean, Roku just, this is the whole next segment, so I'm not going to jump it too much. But if the Apple TV, if the main thing it does is light up two more lights on my receiver when I plug it in.

• 1:09:23Speaker 01

  So you were talking about this, please explain your.

• 1:09:25Nilay Patel?

  I will be very happy.

• 1:09:26Speaker 01

  What, what, what did the lights mean on your receiver?

• 1:09:29Nilay Patel?

  So 4K HDR, that's been leaked in the firmware, it's a given. There is not yet a device, we've talked about this.

• 1:09:37Speaker 01

  Let's say you plug in a 1080p Apple TV into your receiver, or let's say a 720p Apple TV. Do you get one light and then there's two lights for 1080p and then three lights for 4K?

• 1:09:48Nilay Patel?

  There's like, the TV will be like Dolby Vision and it gets real bright.

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:09:53Nilay Patel?

  That's a light.

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:09:54Nilay Patel?

  Conceptually, it's a light. My receiver is like 4K pass through.

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  Are these not literal lights?

• 1:09:59Nilay Patel?

  No, on my receiver, when it detects a 4K signal, it like gives a little light. There it is. It's like you did it. And then the TV like puts up the banner that says Dolby Vision.

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 1:10:10Nilay Patel?

  Cause it's switched picture mode. It's all very exciting.

• 1:10:13Speaker 01

  One light from each spot.

• 1:10:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  Adds up.

• 1:10:16Nilay Patel?

  Super, no, no, that's just.

• 1:10:17Speaker 01

  Two lights.

• 1:10:18Nilay Patel?

  That's one conceptual light.

• 1:10:19Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:10:20Nilay Patel?

  Two physical lights, one conceptual light.

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:10:22Nilay Patel?

  You with me on that?

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay, no, but let's keep going.

• 1:10:27Nilay Patel?

  One feature, two lights.

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:30Nilay Patel?

  One conceptual light.

• 1:10:33Nilay Patel?

  Every time I say that, Paul just melts into disaster. All right, so that's one light.

• 1:10:40Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:10:41Nilay Patel?

  Run with me on that dude.

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

• 1:10:43Nilay Patel?

  Alright, the other light is the Atmos light, which is the surround sound.

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 1:10:49Nilay Patel?

  So like when Dolby Digital hits my receiver, it lights up Dolby Digital. Great, and you can light up Dolby Digital Plus, you can light up DTS Neuro X, like all kinds of lights. That's like a cornucopia of lights.

• 1:11:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:05Nilay Patel?

  The one light, the two lights you cannot get together are Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, which is very funny because they're both made by Dolby. But virtually, I think, literally the only way to do it now is to go out and buy a new LG TV. So I've been in, I don't want to do that, it's a haven, it's great, bolted to the wall. Yeah, it's too small though. Well, you can't get a bigger one, so I'm just waiting. LG has some OLED business to finish here. They need to make the small ones good, they need to make the bigger ones bigger. Get on it LG, and build it in the US of A.

• 1:11:40Speaker 01

  I think my big takeaway here is buy LG TV.

• 1:11:44Nilay Patel?

  They're great, anyway.

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  Two lights.

• 1:11:47Nilay Patel?

  Two lights.

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  They're really conceptual lights.

• 1:11:50Nilay Patel?

  So if all Apple does is sell a new Apple TV that when I plug it into my receiver, it's exactly the same, but it has 4K HDR, like Dolby Vision or HDR10, whatever. And it supports Atmos.

• 1:12:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:12:03Nilay Patel?

  That means-

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  And some quantity of content is purchasable.

• 1:12:08Nilay Patel?

  That's out there. But all it's really doing is like lighting up two more lights, because it supports two more higher quality standards. I don't think that's anywhere near enough to compete with the fact that Roku is kicking their ass in the $29 market. Because there's not actually a lot of people who give a shit about the lights like I do. I really care about the lights.

• 1:12:30Speaker 01

  The literal and figurative lights.

• 1:12:34Nilay Patel?

  The literal and emotional lights of watching television at my home are very complicated. Yeah, but if that's it, like, I don't think they can reboot the interface in a serious way. Because they've had app developers making apps like buying into the TVOS. So you can't just throw out all that work. Now you're committed to having a swipey remote and buttons and voice. You've got apps built around it. So you can't throw out like the input system. You can maybe replace the home screen with that TV app they put out. But Netflix and other things don't plug into it. Like, I think they're really limited what they can do in that space. And I don't think people actually want little iOS computers plugged into their TV. I think they just want

• 1:13:19Nilay Patel?

  a $40 Roku stick. It's tough. Real tough. Still a hobby.

• 1:13:25Speaker 01

  Still a hobby.

• 1:13:27Nilay Patel?

  Still a hobby.

• 1:13:29Nilay Patel?

  But like, if Apple is the product for high-end AV nerds, it's not never what Apple has been.

• 1:13:34Speaker 01

  I, I, I see no reason for them to do this right now. It seems like the one twist that they could do is this is their game console moment.

• 1:13:41Nilay Patel?

  That's so hard.

• 1:13:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, there would be so many things to be doing right now.

• 1:13:46Nilay Patel?

  So many, and also they have two really great competitors. Like, you'd have to walk in, get all of Sony's exclusives.

• 1:13:53Speaker 01

  There's three of those. Nintendo's still around too.

• 1:13:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's true. Good old Nintendo. But I meant for the, don't, don't say anything bad about Nintendo. Mario plus Ravens is awesome.

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  It's so hard to believe.

• 1:14:07Nilay Patel?

  Well, you're, you're just wrong, man.

• 1:14:09Speaker 01

  I just have no patience for those tactics games.

• 1:14:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I just don't think, is this?

• 1:14:14Speaker 02

  This one's, this one's a blast.

• 1:14:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I, you're right. They have, they have three great competitors. I just meant

• 1:14:20Nilay Patel?

  the, the, the PS4 and the Xbox, if they turn the Apple TV into a game console. Those are the most direct competitors because Switch is also like, take it with you.

• 1:14:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:14:29Nilay Patel?

  And they have a phone for that. I know. Poor sweet Apple TV. I'm so excited about that part of their presentation when they're like, it still costs $200. And then like, Eddie Q points at me and he's like, you got your lights.

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, you should just, just send them a photo of your receiver. And then like Photoshop it with the lights on that you would wish to be on?

• 1:14:49Nilay Patel?

  Can I tell you a story?

• 1:14:50Speaker 01

  So they could just like present that to you?

• 1:14:52Nilay Patel?

  When the last Apple TV came out, and I was doing the review, they were like, we don't have power button on here and we don't do IR because everything's going to run over HDMI/CC. I took it home, plugged it in my stuff. This is all a little bit broken. CC's, I've, you know, got this like Panasonic TV, Pioneer receiver, there's all kinds of stuff in the chain. I'm like, it's not working quite right. And they're like, what receiver do you have? And I took a picture of it and they, they literally screenshotted, they found the manual, they screenshotted the PDF in the manual and told me what settings to fix. It was very nice of them, but I was like, this is why, this is why TV is a huge mess. Okay, I'm going to read this ad, then we should actually, there's a surprising amount of TV news to talk about here.

• 1:15:37Nilay Patel?

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• 1:16:24Nilay Patel?

  Hour and a half lunch breaks. I don't get that.

• 1:16:27Speaker 01

  Well, you could.

• 1:16:27Nilay Patel?

  We should start a sheet factory.

• 1:16:32Nilay Patel?

  Paul? Every week, my friend, you do a segment at this time with one consistent name.

• 1:16:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I forgot.

• 1:16:43Nilay Patel?

  Is that what it's called this week?

• 1:16:47Speaker 01

  Oh, I remember what I just forgot. I had to come up with a name for it. It's called Untitled.

• 1:16:54Nilay Patel?

  I'm letting this one slide.

• 1:16:57Speaker 01

  It's the Harry Potter clock. Somebody made the Harry Potter clock, which I think is like, it happens like every six months.

• 1:17:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:03Speaker 01

  Somebody makes the Harry Potter clock, but somebody did it again, and I'm really happy. It's like, there's a clock that tracks.

• 1:17:11Nilay Patel?

  Locations?

• 1:17:12Speaker 01

  Like of different fa- okay, so in, in Harry Potter, the Weasleys have a clock and the different hands on the clock say where the different members of the family are right now, like at work or like in mortal peril or something like that. Like near the end, spoilers, but all the hands are near mortal, mortal peril for all the Weasleys.

• 1:17:31Nilay Patel?

  Oh, no.

• 1:17:31Speaker 01

  It's very scary.

• 1:17:35Nilay Patel?

  This clock is a real situation, Paul. Somebody made it.

• 1:17:38Speaker 01

  It sucks. When I'm trying to stall, I can't Google very well.

• 1:17:44Speaker 02

  See, Paul, what I was expecting you to do is like, this, the, the segment is called, called Pod Pod, or maybe Bud Buddy, about this insane phone case that the inventor of the Pebble is making.

• 1:17:56Speaker 01

  That's pretty good.

• 1:17:57Nilay Patel?

  That's pretty good.

• 1:17:58Speaker 02

  Wait, it's a, it's a-

• 1:17:58Nilay Patel?

  Before we do that, I just want everyone to, to take note of the fact that Paul's attempt at stalling was recounting the plot of Harry Potter.

• 1:18:09Nilay Patel?

  Okay, now we can talk about the Bud Buddy.

• 1:18:12Speaker 01

  I, I can't find this clock.

• 1:18:14Nilay Patel?

  So Harry's a boy.

• 1:18:15Speaker 01

  I might have just imagined this clock. Do you think that's possible?

• 1:18:18Nilay Patel?

  Did you just read Harry Potter last night? Are you serious? This doesn't exist?

• 1:18:25Speaker 01

  I know it exists. You just, don't even worry about it. Dieter, just tell everybody about the Bud Buddy real quick.

• 1:18:31Nilay Patel?

  Paul's in mortal peril. I know where his hands are pointing.

• 1:18:35Speaker 02

  Oh my god, it's the ETA clock. That's what you're looking for, Paul.

• 1:18:38Nilay Patel?

  So that Eric-

• 1:18:39Speaker 02

  Now, the, the, the pod case is about Eric Petugowski, who invented the Pebble smartwatch, and now he's over, now my competitor, he's got a new company that's just gonna make little random things. He's not gonna try and, you know, take over the world of smartwatches again. And it's an iPhone case that has a battery in it, but then it has slots in the top to stick AirPods in, so that your AirPods are always attached to a case attached to your phone.

• 1:19:01Nilay Patel?

  And charging.

• 1:19:01Speaker 02

  It also charges-

• 1:19:02Nilay Patel?

  Here's what I don't understand-

• 1:19:03Speaker 02

  Both the phone and the AirPods.

• 1:19:04Nilay Patel?

  The, I thought the AirPods charging case was like an integral part of the whole Bluetooth system there. Right, so if you want to reset the AirPods, you push the button on the back of the case. You can pair them to other things. You, you take them in and out, it lights, you open the lid, your phone knows to connect.

• 1:19:21Speaker 02

  It's not like a relay station, it does a bunch of stuff, but if you're, if they're paired to your phone, you don't need it around.

• 1:19:27Nilay Patel?

  Huh. I always thought that, yeah, I, I always thought that, like, it, so they're off when they're out of your ears and you put them in your ears, they just light up and start working? This is, because the way I use AirPods is I flip open the case and they connect. So how do, like, when they're in the case, how do they know to connect to your ears? Just because you put them in?

• 1:19:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, because you put them in and that lights up the IR thing and they turn on and they're connected. You could also open up Control Center, swipe over to the Music pane, which makes perfect sense, and then tap the Bluetooth thing and then switch the Bluetooth icon.

• 1:19:58Nilay Patel?

  Okay. I mean, if this case didn't look completely insane, I'd be into it.

• 1:20:02Speaker 02

  It just looks so ridiculous.

• 1:20:03Nilay Patel?

  It's not. The AirPods are not, like, what's the opposite of ungainly? They're not gainly. They're ungainly, is what I'm trying to say.

• 1:20:12Speaker 02

  They're ungainly.

• 1:20:13Nilay Patel?

  And trying to craft a case, like, custom fit around their extremely weird shape, leads you to a real mistake.

• 1:20:22Nilay Patel?

  Alright, Paul. It was a good segment, man. It's the ETA clock. Yeah, rescued over here. Thank you, Dieter. At least, that segment this week was called "Dieter Saves the Day." Dieter Saves the Day. Alright, we're gonna, we have to talk about this stuff because it's all crazy.

• 1:20:38Speaker 02

  We gotta do it fast.

• 1:20:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we're, we're way over time here, but I'm just gonna read this list of headlines. And then you guess what theme I'm trying to convey.

• 1:20:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:48Nilay Patel?

  You, Paul, and also you, the listener. I'm pointing at Paul, but I figuratively mean the listener. Functional lights.

• 1:20:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:57Nilay Patel?

  Okay, here's a list of headlines. Spotify and Hulu just launched an amazing $5 bundle for college students. T-Mobile partners with Netflix for free Netflix. Apple and Amazon are reportedly in the running for James Bond movie rights. Marvel and Star Wars movies will be exclusive to Disney's upcoming streaming service. Roku files for $100 million IPO. Roku begins programming content with the launch of an ad-supported movie channel. Apple's Eddie Q is no longer in charge of Siri, just focused on services.

• 1:21:27Speaker 01

  That last one, it's a little bit of a curve ball.

• 1:21:31Nilay Patel?

  Well, I think it pairs with the Apple and Amazon. Q's job is just the media stuff now. That's a lot.

• 1:21:37Speaker 02

  The Q thing is like the dealing with media stuff and what stuff gets to go where and who partners with what network and whatever is clearly a full-time job.

• 1:21:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and they just hired a bunch of network executives from Sony. And I think that's probably why the James Bond thing is happening because Sony's had the James Bond rights for so long.

• 1:21:57Nilay Patel?

  That probably the Sony guys who now work at Apple are like, what if, what if we just have that thing that we always had? And Apple has the money, Amazon has the money too. But that is a whole bunch of big tech company. Media partnership news, all in one in a couple of days. Most of, most of the stuff happened today. I.

• 1:22:17Nilay Patel?

  The move for these companies to start also being content distributors.

• 1:22:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:21Nilay Patel?

  To me is tied heavily. Oh, you know what we didn't put here? Is that T-Mobile, when they did the Netflix on us thing? John Ledger made a video where he just trashed AT&T and Verizon.

• 1:22:34Speaker 01

  That's the T-Mobile one sound, the T-Mobile one sticks out to me because it seems very contra AT&T and Verizon. Where T-Mobile's like. I mean. I don't trust T-Mobile to actually be a good company, although my cellphone reception has finally recovered this week after like a month of being horrible. But yeah, like we don't need to have our own, I, I am a little tired of everybody starting a new platform.

• 1:23:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:02Speaker 01

  For media that will also create original shows.

• 1:23:04Nilay Patel?

  Right. So this is, we have talked about net neutrality a thousand times in the Vergecast ever since, since the, before the Vergecast existed.

• 1:23:11Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:23:11Nilay Patel?

  All of this stuff is, we're going to own the pipes and then you're going to consume our content on those pipes, which is preferred to everybody else's content. Netflix and T-Mobile, you, you should, everybody should go watch the John Ledger video.

• 1:23:23Speaker 01

  It's like friendship.

• 1:23:25Nilay Patel?

  It. It's not. His vibe in that video is not friendship. His vibe in that video is everybody stop doing this garbage.

• 1:23:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:23:32Nilay Patel?

  Stop bundling, I think he actually says, stop bundling the thing people don't want, which with the thing they want, which is unlimited data. So he's like, we're just going to give you Netflix because that's what you want. And then he's like. How much of a fucking joke is that Go 90? Go 90 is garbage. Like, he's actually like saying it. Uh, and then he's like, and they keep buying these like faded internet brands like AOL and Yahoo. What losers. Verizon, I love having you around. And it's like John Ledger's just telling the truth. I love it. I thought it was great. It was like the funniest Ledger performance ever.

• 1:24:05Speaker 01

  I will say the thing that hurt is that the T-Mobile deal is for people with two or more lines.

• 1:24:11Nilay Patel?

  Family plans.

• 1:24:12Speaker 01

  You know, who doesn't have two or more lines?

• 1:24:14Nilay Patel?

  Do you not have a family, Paul?

• 1:24:19Speaker 01

  Although I will say, the private, I don't hardly watch Netflix anymore. The primary reason I keep it around is because my parents use my Netflix account in a reverse millennial situation.

• 1:24:28Nilay Patel?

  You do have a family. Get them on T-Mobile.

• 1:24:30Speaker 01

  And they are on, did they switch off T-Mobile?

• 1:24:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:34Speaker 01

  Dang it.

• 1:24:35Nilay Patel?

  Well, here's a mystery that you should not solve on the radio.

• 1:24:37Speaker 01

  Guess I'll have to call my parents.

• 1:24:41Nilay Patel?

  No, so here's this huge list of news. I think the Spotify Hulu combo for $5 for college students is so smart. Like, everyone's just gonna buy that. Spotify is gonna keep building its dominant position. The Netflix thing we just talked about, I think is great. I mean, T-Mobile subscribers are just gonna do it. They're just gonna watch Netflix. In a way that I don't think Verizon subscribers are just gonna start watching Go 90 because it's free. By the way, we have to disclose this. I'm just gonna say it. Very proud of the company. Our friends at SB Nation are putting a show on Go 90 about true crime and sports. Big exclusive in variety. So there's your disclosure. That said, no one's gonna watch Go 90, except for this SB Nation show, which you should download the app and watch it.

• 1:25:22Speaker 01

  Just this show.

• 1:25:23Nilay Patel?

  They're our friends. So here's my question.

• 1:25:25Speaker 01

  Wait, I just want to say this last thing.

• 1:25:26Nilay Patel?

  Do we feel comfortable?

• 1:25:27Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 1:25:27Nilay Patel?

  And then this Apple James Bond news, I feel like Apple's taste in culture products is just stuck in like 1992.

• 1:25:37Speaker 01

  It's really bad.

• 1:25:37Nilay Patel?

  They're like, here's a free U2 record. We bought a James Bond movie. Like, it's all of the taste of people who, that stuff was really cool for them.

• 1:25:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:25:48Nilay Patel?

  But they're not, they're not really.

• 1:25:52Nilay Patel?

  With it, like they gotta, I mean, like, I, man, I try to watch Carpool Karaoke.

• 1:25:58Speaker 01

  Why can't Apple give up real fast?

• 1:26:01Nilay Patel?

  Huh?

• 1:26:01Speaker 01

  I want Apple to give up really bad.

• 1:26:04Nilay Patel?

  They're not going, I mean, just look at this trend.

• 1:26:07Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:26:08Nilay Patel?

  Like, this is too much of a trend for a company of Apple's size and ambition to ignore. But, like, do they just want to be the vessel for everyone else's insane content strategy? Or do they want to be a player?

• 1:26:20Speaker 01

  I will say, I, I've been using YouTube Red and, for, for a while, and the YouTube app updated recently, and there's like a banner up top, and it's like I'm on Netflix, like this banner. So i- in a kind of a different format than just a regular video, there's a banner that's advertising their YouTube Red shows. Which is like, I don't even get, like, I already pay you for this thing. I've never got it for your original content.

• 1:26:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I just don't want to watch ads.

• 1:26:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just don't want to watch ads. I wish you understood that.

• 1:26:52Nilay Patel?

  I know, man.

• 1:26:53Speaker 02

  So, are we, we're, we're, we're basically unhappy with this, right?

• 1:26:58Nilay Patel?

  I think it's fun.

• 1:26:59Speaker 02

  Like, fundamentally, I don't like the idea that I'm, if I'm going to pick a wireless carrier, if I'm going to pick a cable company, I'm going to pick the one that's fastest and most reliable. And I don't want to pick the one because it's the one that, you know, happens to have a corporate synergy with HBO, or happens to have, you know, Go90 on it, or whatever.

• 1:27:21Speaker 02

  Here's a disclosure for you, Comcast, something or other investor in Vox Media, our parent company. How much of this do I get to blame on the, the Comcast NBCU thing from back when, you know, back of the day? And they, we let them, you know, merge, and then that's like the moment when the pipe and the content became the same company.

• 1:27:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:41Speaker 02

  And everyone's like, well, they got away with it. We can do whatever we want.

• 1:27:44Nilay Patel?

  You know, all the analysis of that deal that I've ever read suggests, and again, as Dieter said, disclosure, they're an investor in the company. Good to see a Comcast. But all the analysis of that deal I've read is that it's mostly successful because they don't actually do anything. Right, NBC runs itself.

• 1:28:01Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:28:02Nilay Patel?

  And they're successful and they've got theme parks and the minions and NBC stuff. And Comcast is a cable company. And the actual amount of crossover between the streams is like very low. And I think.

• 1:28:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:28:15Nilay Patel?

  When you look at what AT&T wants to do with DirecTV and HBO and they're like, we're gonna cut down Game of Thrones to be better on phones. Like, there's a higher level of ambition than what Comcast has been doing with NBC. I don't thi- that's not to say that, you know, AT&T's idea isn't right and then suddenly we're gonna get all kinds of crazy Comcast stuff happening with NBC. But I think the- another reality of it, which is interesting, is that Comcast is a cable company. And they basically give you TV and internet to your home. And they don't have a wireless business of any note. So for them to own NBC and then be like, we make TV, we sell a TV network, like NBC's on it now. We sell fast internet to your house and like you can go to msnbc.com.

• 1:28:59Nilay Patel?

  Like, the, the, they've done a lot of weird stuff, like. Our internet service running on an Xbox is outside of your data cap. They do all of that stuff. But the, I think the stakes of that versus everything will be wireless or mobile broadband. And we're gonna do all kinds of crazy stuff around that. Those stakes feel very different to me. And the, kind of the level of ambition around Verizon wanting to have Go90 preloaded on phones and like. Doing push alerts for Go90 shows that are free off your data cap. The data caps are smaller, so getting free stuff on top of it is more meaningful. All that seems way more dangerous to me.

• 1:29:39Speaker 01

  I, I think that what is bugging me here is not like a big, like, moral or ethical or legal issue with monopolies or anything. It's just seems so uninspired. It's like, you know, like the rush to VR, the rush to, you know, it like a bunch of tech companies that didn't clearly know what to do next. And then they saw Netflix doing something and HBO succeeding with on demand. And they're like, oh, let's get into original content. And, you know, it's just something to do because they didn't have a good idea. I mean, I see how it is a strategic, important thing to own a segment of the market in, but it's just annoying to me.

• 1:30:21Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's just another version of lock in, right? Like, if you're Apple and everyone loves YouTube, and then Google's like, here's the YouTube phone. And if you buy this phone, like, we'll partner with Verizon and excuse YouTube from the data cap. Like, a lot of YouTubers will buy that phone. It's like, Apple needs to be in the game and like, create leverage against it. I don't know. I think it's, I just read all the headlines because it's a trend. Like, each individual piece of news is like, whatever. Like, Roku's IPO-ing, like, not huge news on its own. But as a trend, the amount of tech and media partnerships that are happening right now, easily the most interesting thing that's happening in the tech industry. At least to me. But I just like lights on my receiver. It's my favorite

• 1:31:03Nilay Patel?

  thing. All right. I think that's our show. We're way over time. I will say this. Next week, we're doing the show live in San Francisco. You should come to it. Hang out with us. We'll tell some jokes. We'll talk about all of the Apple news. Tons and tons of stuff to talk about. Who knows who will show up. It's gonna be amazing. Anyway, Lauren Good, host Too Embarrassed to Ask. Dieter was on this week. Listen to that. Kara Swisher, host Recode Decode, which is wonderful. Peter Kafka, host Recode Media, great for media nerds. We have a new podcast coming. It's not out yet. Why don't you push that button?

• 1:31:32Speaker 01

  Very excited.

• 1:31:33Nilay Patel?

  Listen to the pilot today. A+. Super excited about that. That's coming soon. You can also listen to other shows of the Vox Media Podcast Network, of which I will again confidently assert that we have the flagship, not a frigate, or schooner. I took down a schooner in Assassin's Creed last night.

• 1:31:54Nilay Patel?

  I don't know why I started playing this game. It was just like there. Anyhow, go listen to Ezra Klein's show, go listen to The Weeds, go listen to Eater Up. So all those are great. Lots of podcasts out in this world. And you can talk to us. Dieter's at Backlon, Paul's at Future Paul, I'm at Reckless. Love your feedback. Go to iTunes, rate, review, all those good things. We'll see you next week. Rock and roll.

• 1:32:15Speaker 02

  Paul.

• 1:32:16Nilay Patel?

  Bridge has live.

• 1:32:17Speaker 02

  Run with it.