Wixen vs Spotify, problems with Siri, and Breadbot

This week on The Vergecast, Nilay, Dieter, and Paul are back in New York City after being at SXSW last weekend. To kick off the show, they welcome back senior writer Sarah Jeong to explain a $1.6 billion lawsuit between Spotify and Wixen Publishing. In the second half of the show, the trio discusses recent reports of the inner workings of Siri — including the history and how it stands today. There’s a lot more in between that — like the segment Paul does every week, “Untitled” — so listen to it all, and you’ll get it all. 02:27 - A $1.6 billion Spotify lawsuit is based on a law made for player pianos 31:45 - What went wrong with Siri 47:38 - Paul’s weekly segment “Untitled” 48:45 - Never forget a letter value with this Scrabble-themed keyboard 49:13 - These gargantuan ‘headphones’ massage your ears 49:43 - Google’s NSynth Super is an AI-backed touchscreen synth 50:28 - BreadBot is an insanely over-engineered gadget just for baking loaves of bread 51:03 - This Japanese startup is making a hover backpack to augment jumping ability 52:05 - Bose is developing augmented reality glasses with a focus on sound 57:04 - Fitbit takes a second swing at smartwatches with the $199 Versa 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.

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

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• 0:42Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship audio experience of the internet and The Verge. Also The Verge. I am Eli. It's an interactive audio experience? Yeah, you can play it and pause it. You can skip around. Tweet at us. Paul is here.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 1:01Nilay Patel?

  Dieter is here. Hello. Sarah Jung is joining us. Hi. Can I tell a story about the... Sarah's gonna talk to us on Spotify, but I just want to tell a story about the flagship thing. So last week, we were at South by Southwest, which was an experience.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  Thank you to everybody who came live to the show. It was amazing.

• 1:14Nilay Patel?

  We had a line around the block to come see us. It was wild. And why'd you push that button? Caitlin and Ashley did that and it was great. So thank you, everybody who came to both of our shows. But we were the first thing that happened in our, like, brand house.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29Nilay Patel?

  What it was. And so our CEO, Jim Bankoff, like, opened the house. He was like, "Welcome, everybody. Thank you for being here." And then I sat down and I'm like, "We're starting." And I confidently said, "The Vergecast, the flagship podcast." And I was like, "I don't know if our CEO knows that I make that joke every week." Okay, what did he say? Huh?

• 1:49Speaker 01

  Nothing.

• 1:50Nilay Patel?

  Nothing. Zero response.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Stone cold silence.

• 1:52Nilay Patel?

  I also refer to Ezra Klein as my hated rival. Yeah, that's true. It was a real, real set of emotions for me. You can listen to the top of the show. If you hear my voice wavering, it's me thinking, "Oh, I just got fired." Maybe, maybe.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  Jim, the CEO, does like a podcast, like a gardening show or something that we don't know about and he calls it The Flash.

• 2:14Nilay Patel?

  Be great. Anyway, it was really fun. Thank you to everybody who came. I was there for 36 hours. It was a real whirlwind. A bunch of people came to our party that night. It was great to meet a whole bunch of fans. Thank you, everybody. Okay. So Sarah is here. Hi, Sarah. I want to talk to you. You just wrote a piece that you've been working on for weeks. Basically, I tortured you into writing about Spotify's lawsuit. So if you don't know, Spotify is being sued for $1.6 billion by a company called Wixen, which represents, I believe, Tom Petty and a whole bunch of other artists.

• 2:49Nilay Patel?

  Oh, man, rage. Can you just imagine Zachary LaRocca right now? Spotify has this historic controversy about how much it pays artists. Yes, lots of artists are very mad at them all the time. And it's IPO-ing now. It's gonna happen. So it's supposed to become a public company. There's a lot of scrutiny on its business model. And there's just been, when that lawsuit was filed, there was just a lot of headlines about how it's about royalties and the artists are finally ganging up on Spotify. And I glanced over it and it didn't seem to add up quite right because it just doesn't... We'll get into it. And so Sarah, who is just one of the smartest legal thinkers I know, I said, "Hey, you should write about this."

• 3:29Nilay Patel?

  And then she made frustrated noises at me through Slack for weeks and she finally published the piece.

• 3:35Speaker 03

  I mean, I was like, "It'll be so simple, Neil. I'll have it turned around to you so quickly."

• 3:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 3:41Speaker 03

  That definitely happened.

• 3:44Nilay Patel?

  Because it's super complicated. So Sarah, can you walk us through what's happening here? Because, I mean, I just read your piece and it seems so dumb and so complicated at the same time.

• 3:55Speaker 03

  Well, where should I even begin? Do I start with 1909?

• 4:00Nilay Patel?

  Player pianos, 1909. Start with what they're being sued for. The very specific thing, because it's so silly.

• 4:07Speaker 03

  The very specific thing.

• 4:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the very specific thing they're being sued for is not paying something well... It's not so much not paying something, but they're saying that these licenses that were supposed to be paid are missing. They're called mechanical licenses. They're licenses that go to songwriters specifically. And we can get more into that in a bit because there's a difference between the recording artist and the songwriter. But the sort of core of the case, like the theory of the case, isn't that, hey, you don't have this money, you're not willing to pay this money, people, like you're you're infringing our copyright. It's it's that you forgot to send these notices that are required under this section to let people know that they're in the Spotify catalog.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, literally mailing pieces of paper.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  So they they they're not contending that Spotify didn't pay the songwriter. They're contending that Spotify didn't send a letter to the songwriter saying, hey, we got you, we're gonna pay you. Is that is that right?

• 5:04Speaker 03

  I think that they're contending that the money's missing, but like no one knows where the money went. But there's money, there's definitely money set aside. Like Spotify put it like every time it streams, all right, here's here's some money. It goes into this account, it's gonna go to someone eventually. And then they hire like a third party to go find the person. And then it's supposed to it's supposed to go to all these people. Like Spotify isn't just like, ah, we won't pay them. Just no one knows what's happening to happening to the money or and apparently, according to Wixen, their artists weren't even told that they were going to get paid. Like they didn't receive that special piece of paper that they're supposed to get according to the law.

• 5:41Speaker 02

  So if I'm a songwriter, I write a song and then I get a check in the mail from Spotify saying, hey, thanks for writing the song, here's some money. Does that count as a mechanical, like the notice that is from this law?

• 5:54Speaker 03

  I kind of don't think so. Well, to be fair, there's like a couple of different ways you can put notice. Like you can also file notice with the copyright office. And apparently, like since the last year, forty five million notices of intent have been filed, like from various tech companies, right? And the copyright office is like, they've got some, uh, Technological debt right now, like their, their computers are like not totally up to date, like they're, they're, they're trying, you know, they're trying, they're trying their best that they can with, with what they've got and with what Congress lets them have. So the, the whole situation is just sort of super borked right now.

• 6:29Nilay Patel?

  So I want to, we've been doing the show for six minutes and we are already hopelessly in the weeds. Yeah. Right, like that is the state of this law, it's the state of Spotify's business, it's the state of how musicians get paid. So just to like simplify it, Sarah, would this, tell me if this characterization is accurate. You stream a song on Spotify, the person who recorded it gets some money. Yeah. The person who wrote the song is supposed to get some money. Spotify by law is supposed to mail the songwriter a piece of paper saying, you're in our catalog and we owe you some money. Yeah. And then presumably pay them.

• 7:09Nilay Patel?

  And the reason that the lawsuit is 1.6 billion dollars is not because that is the amount of money Spotify owes in royalties, it's that if you don't mail the piece of paper, they can ask for extra damages. So the money they're asking for is, what's, it's like 150,000 something?

• 7:27Speaker 03

  It's not extra damages, it's statutory damages. They're asking for maximum statutory damages per song infringed. So it's like, as, as you know, Eli, every time, when you infringe copyright, there's like a statutory damage, like instead of calculating out actual damages, like, oh, I was hurt by this much because you infringed my, uh, my copyright, it's, you get sort of this automatic liability, like it's, and it's, it can be tens of thousands of dollars, it can be like over a hundred thousand dollars depending on how a jury returns to you. And I believe the maximum is 150.

• 8:04Speaker 03

  Thousand dollars. So Woodson is asking for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars per song that they didn't send out the notice of intent.

• 8:12Nilay Patel?

  Because they're missing paper. It's not a royalty.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  Wait, so what about these pre-negotiated rates? The nine point one cents per composition?

• 8:20Nilay Patel?

  All right, so now, wait, before we go into those weeds, just explain. So I just want everyone to know, like, that, this, the money here, that huge flashy number, is not based on what Spotify would owe artists if everything was working perfectly. Right? That's not what they've cheated out of artists. It's you failed to mail paper, and we can add up this, these extra statutory damages to one point six.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  This is like getting a parking ticket.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Why do you, why do you keep trying to dunk on paper, man?

• 8:46Speaker 02

  It's okay.

• 8:47Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so that's, I just want to like, point out, that's, that's that number. What Paul is asking about, and what I want Sarah to explain, is how it's supposed to work. Like, if everything was working perfectly, who's, who's supposed to get paid what?

• 8:58Speaker 03

  So the song, like, the recording artists get a cut, and that's negotiated through the record labels, who presumably also get their cut on the way out, right? So, the, Spotify's paying the record labels, who are paying the recording artists, so they all get their cut. And supposedly, that's a much larger cut than the songwriters, because the songwriters, their cut is determined by law through the Copyright Royalty Board. Although, I've also been told that they're also paying the songwriters through another middleman, which is the PROs, who, which, like, BMI, ASCAP, and so forth. They also administer royalty through radio. So they're paying those P-folks, and they're paying

• 9:40Speaker 03

  the mechanicals, which is, that's a complete, these are two separate regimes entirely. But the money eventually goes through middlemen, and then back to songwriters.

• 9:49Nilay Patel?

  So, I saw you tweeting yesterday, that the only good canonical example Uh, song to use to explain this is, it was a Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.

• 9:58Speaker 03

  By Cyndi Lauper, yeah.

• 9:59Nilay Patel?

  By Cyndi Lauper. So go through the specifics. So Cyndi Lauper is the recording artist. Uh huh. She's the famous, the person everybody knows, but somebody else wrote it. Sure.

• 10:07Speaker 03

  Robert Hazard wrote it, cause he, he made a demo, uh, like a couple of years prior, where he sings from a man's point of view, which makes it a very different song.

• 10:17Nilay Patel?

  Wow, wow.

• 10:18Speaker 03

  The Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, man. Yeah, yeah, it's really, it's a very different song. It's much less cool, actually. Um, so he wrote the song, he's the songwriter. He's the only songwriter listed. Cyndi Lauper is the only recording artist listed, and they don't cross over, like, they're not, like, a lot of the, a lot of songs are like, oh, Taylor Swift is the, is the recording artist, featuring also this person, featuring also this person. So there's like five different recording artists. And then Taylor Swift is also the songwriter, plus this other songwriter, plus this other songwriter. And so you've got overlap and all of these complications, and who gets what percentage is like, you know, presumably negotiated out in contracts. So that's super complicated. But if you want to understand mechanicals, let's start with the most simple song possible.

• 11:00Speaker 03

  It's Girls Wanna Have Fun, with the recording artist. There's only one. The songwriter, there's only one, and they're two different people entirely. And on top of that, they're both post 1972, so they belong to the same copyright regime, instead of two different copyright regimes.

• 11:16Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god. Yeah, this is incredible, isn't it? Alright, so walk us through Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. So I play it on Spotify. What is supposed to hap-

• 11:23Speaker 03

  What is supposed to happen? Alright, so a cut, let's say, first goes to BMI, and BMI gives part of that cut to Robert Hazard, the songwriter. Uh, let's, let's set that aside, because that's-

• 11:35Nilay Patel?

  BMI is the publishing company?

• 11:36Speaker 03

  No, BMI.

• 11:38Nilay Patel?

  BMI is one of the, the middlemen, uh, that represents songwriters and things they played. There's BMI, ASCAP, and CSAC. It's like Boys and Men interests. Oh my god. Yeah.

• 11:47Speaker 03

  Their performance royalty, yeah, but that's, let's, let's try to pretend they don't exist.

• 11:51Nilay Patel?

  It's impossible to talk about. Okay. We hadn't even gotten to the old timey pianos. I know. And keep going, keep going, keep going.

• 11:58Speaker 03

  So then you have the recording artist, right? So the record labels, Spotify has deals with all of the record labels individually, right? So we don't even know what they're paying the record labels, cause all that is pretty hush hush. Uh, because that's just their dealing one on one with those people. So the record label is getting a cut, and the record label is giving part of that cut to Cyndi Lauper, because she's the recording artist. Um- All right, now we've got the mechanicals. The mechanicals are already set by the Copyright Royalty Board. Every five years, the rates are set. And I believe in the period, like last period, it was something like 10% of revenue, right? So they're taking like 10% of total revenue or something.

• 12:43Speaker 03

  Like one of those formulas, because there were like three different formulas and they had to pick one, whichever was larger. It was like, it was basically an SAT math problem. And they take that and they give that to the publisher, who then gives a cut to the songwriter.

• 12:58Nilay Patel?

  So songwriter gets paid twice?

• 12:59Speaker 03

  Presumably so.

• 13:01Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 13:02Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 13:02Nilay Patel?

  Dieter just mentioned old timey pianos, and you just said mechanicals, and I want to connect those things.

• 13:08Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 13:10Nilay Patel?

  Right, it's, they're called mechanicals because when player pianos came out. Yeah. The role that the player piano played. Yep. Was not considered sheet music. Correct. And so there was a law passed to provide, when you play a song. Mm-hmm. The songwriter gets credit. The songwriter gets paid. Right. Because of player piano. Per play? Well, on Spotify, yes. On Spotify, yes.

• 13:35Speaker 03

  Per piano role.

• 13:37Nilay Patel?

  Per sale of piano roll. Yeah. And like, this is like a big deal, this is where you're saying like 1909, because before there was not recorded music available. Right. So songwriters made money by selling the sheet music. Right. And we're still, we're still in that world. We're still in the world where the legal foundations of how Spotify pays people is angry songwriters who want to kill the player piano. Right. And that is the foundation. So it's called mechanical, and there's a great part of Sarah's piece where she mentions like, no one knows why it's called mechanicals. Like, there's a lot of ways you can get to that word. I always thought it was just because player pianos are mechanical. Yeah. But like.

• 14:19Speaker 03

  I actually thought that too.

• 14:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 14:21Speaker 03

  But then while doing research, I found out that it, it could also mean that it's an automatic license. So like, a songwriter can't stop you.

• 14:31Speaker 03

  From using their song, right? Like, a songwriter can't stop you from using your song as long as you pay up. And the thing that you pay, they don't negotiate. It's pre-negotiated through the government. So there's an automatic rate set. It's mechanical. So it could mean either, either player pianos or that. It's ambiguous.

• 14:48Nilay Patel?

  Uh, if you really want to fall down this hole, and we won't talk about this too much here, but the history of this is like really contentious. It involves like John Philip Sousa telling Congress that player pianos will be the death of American culture because we won't just sit around on the porches and sing to each other anymore.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  And look at us now. He was right. Shut it down.

• 15:06Nilay Patel?

  It was deeply controversial in its time, and now it's here. So I want to talk, I'll keep talking about lawsuit for one second, and then there's something else I want to, I want to bring up from your piece that I thought was interesting. But in regards to the lawsuit, you point out that it seems to be happening because there's a movement afoot to change this whole legal foundation. Is that going to affect this lawsuit? What, what, what's the change coming and how it would affect the lawsuit?

• 15:28Speaker 03

  So there's something called the Music Modernization Act. It was introduced in the House and in the Senate this year. Um, and it has wide industry backing. So like the RIAA is all for it. The NMPA, that's the National Music Publishers Association. Um, so they're, they're the people who are supposedly representing songwriters. They're all for it. Um, Spotify is for it. Pandora is for it. Uh, there's a industry coalition called DEMA, uh, that also represents Spotify, uh, Pandora, and Napster that's for it. So Napster and the RIAA are in league to try to get this, this law passed. Um, and one of the things that it would do is it would revamp mechanicals and it would

• 16:12Speaker 03

  create like this sort of centralized clearinghouse for mechanicals to try and fix this problem. The other thing that it would do is that it would shield companies like Spotify from basically lawsuits like this 1.6 billion dollar Wixen lawsuit, um, as long as they're setting aside money in like an account to pay for mechanicals if mechanicals are missing.

• 16:34Speaker 02

  Why, if we modernize music, why would we even need mechanicals?

• 16:38Nilay Patel?

  Because you still want the songwriters to get paid.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  But they're, they are getting paid. This, this is their second payment.

• 16:44Speaker 03

  BMI and ASCAP don't work with like people who press CDs or, or with like people who sell. Uh, MP3s, like iTunes Store, whatever, that doesn't apply to them. So Spotify, for some reason, both of those things apply to Spotify at the same time.

• 17:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, there's, it's just, I'm gonna ask you a question. You can answer it however you want.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:05Nilay Patel?

  Are Pandora and Spotify the same thing?

• 17:07Speaker 01

  No, because Pandora's like radio.

• 17:09Nilay Patel?

  Except.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  Except, you're correct, and so Pandora paid different fees, I, as I believe. However, they bought Audio, which sounds like radio, but isn't.

• 17:18Nilay Patel?

  Audio is like jam.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  They became, in addition to the radio services, they also have got an all-you-can-eat streaming service where you can pick your songs.

• 17:26Nilay Patel?

  So they're not the, what is Spotify?

• 17:29Speaker 01

  It's a streaming service.

• 17:30Nilay Patel?

  No, but what is it?

• 17:32Speaker 01

  Well, it's kinda like a.

• 17:33Nilay Patel?

  Corporation.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  It's kinda like a player piano.

• 17:35Nilay Patel?

  Corporations are people, goddammit. No, I mean like. And people have to be held responsible. Yeah, sure.

• 17:41Nilay Patel?

  No, it is actually really hard to answer the question of what Spotify is.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  It's like radio, except you're the DJ.

• 17:49Nilay Patel?

  So now it's like radio, so now the radio laws should apply.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:52Nilay Patel?

  Or is it like having access to iTunes where you buy things, or access to CDs? Like, the metaphors underlying, like, the metaphor you would use to figure out how to pay somebody

• 18:04Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 18:04Nilay Patel?

  completely breaks down when you're like paying per stream. Especially because Spotify also has a free service that I don't, did you figure this out? Cause we were talking about it, the free service might be under a different, cause it has restrictions of what you can do.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  Maybe you can help, maybe this will be a helpful illustration. One of the things I, Spotify is very famous for, for me, in my mind, Spotify is the place where you type in The Beatles and you get a Beatles cover band. You type in Led Zeppelin, you get a Led Zeppelin cover band. So, that's a case where the songwriter should still get paid, but it's a different performer.

• 18:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah, 100%. And that, the thing that would get paid is a mechanical royalty.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  But also, this BMI shadow organization.

• 18:50Nilay Patel?

  The, so, Sarah, man. I defer to you. My understanding of BMI.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  I should get a mechanical every time someone downloads an RSS feed of a Verge article that I wrote.

• 19:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you know, there's all these weird people on YouTube who just have robot voices read our stories to like, you know, YouTube audience of three.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:09Nilay Patel?

  Where's my cut, man? Um, so Sarah, so this is very complicated. I think we are in agreement that, uh, the whole system is broken. Uh, you raised the point of this should just be automated. Right? Like, we know who all the people are. We're tracking them in a database. We're tracking plays. Spotify is already automated, presumably the like, transfer money when a song is played to some account. Piece of it. The payment part of it should be automated. Is it just the mess of all these weird middlemen organization? Is that what's preventing it from being automated? Or is there something else?

• 19:41Speaker 03

  I think that that's probably what's going on. I mean, people I talked to were just like, well, there's something wrong. Clearly with between all of these lawsuits and so forth. Clearly there's something going wrong, but you know, no one wants to, no one wants to take responsibility for what's going on. As far as I can tell, there's just five too many layers to this whole business, right? And, and

• 20:06Speaker 03

  But, and, and at each layer, you know, someone's messing up. No one seems to be, you know, quite doing 100%, right? And that, that just racks up after a while and a lot of stuff just goes like, where'd everything go? Where's all the money? Like, you have these stories where once someone hires like a, a firm to basically chase down all their money. Suddenly they see like, oh, look at all of this, these like thousands and thousands of dollars pouring in. There was a story in the Times a couple of years ago where McCartney paid a, a company to administer his rights. And then within 12 months, their revenues increased to 25%.

• 20:43Nilay Patel?

  Wow. That's great.

• 20:45Speaker 03

  So there's It's just, money's just missing all over the place.

• 20:48Nilay Patel?

  There's, there's this great line in the Paul, I'd like to pay you to just go find my money. Oh, absolutely. But not And then I'll keep it. A smaller amount of money.

• 20:57Nilay Patel?

  Uh, there, there's this great line in the Wixen complaint. Cause there's yet, you ready for another agency? There's the Harry Fox Agency. Take it. Which

• 21:06Speaker 01

  Are there bitter rivals with BMI?

• 21:08Nilay Patel?

  They're like frenemy, I don't know.

• 21:10Speaker 03

  They're in different, they're in different businesses entirely.

• 21:12Nilay Patel?

  Harry Fox does eh.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Fox is hairy by default. You should only have to specify the bald ones.

• 21:20Nilay Patel?

  Wow, wow, either. So, Harry Fox is what's supposed to administer a lot of these royalties. So Spotify has just been like telling the Harry Fox. I don't know why.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  Wait, what is, what are they telling Harry Fox?

• 21:34Nilay Patel?

  Agency are like written into like the regulatory law of the United States. I don't know where it came from. Harry Fox Agency represents songwriters.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:42Nilay Patel?

  It's a true thing and they're supposed to administer some of these royalties. Everybody's supposed to just go through it. It just exists. If you know why it's called the Harry Fox Agency and whatever, let us know. It just exists.

• 21:53Speaker 03

  It's a private entity.

• 21:54Nilay Patel?

  It's a private entity.

• 21:56Speaker 03

  Just to make things more complicated, they're a private entity that like owns 90% of this market.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  So they're like a protected monopoly, like the United States Postal Service.

• 22:03Nilay Patel?

  Sarah calls it a cartel in the, in the, in the piece.

• 22:06Speaker 03

  No, I call, I call BMI and ASCAP a cartel. I didn't call Harry Fox a cartel.

• 22:11Nilay Patel?

  They're a different solo cartel. Anyway.

• 22:15Nilay Patel?

  To tell you, this is bonkers. So they, Harry Fox exists and they own 90% of the market. Spotify is just like telling Harry Fox, but Wixen in their complaint is like Spotify should have known Harry Fox is not capable of doing this work. And that's bonkers because they're the only ones who do it.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  Spotify sent Harry Fox a letter, a letter saying, hey, we got this money. And Harry Fox is like, yeah, we, we, we do 90% of the market, but, and then the Wix, Wix. First of all, who's Wixen? Why do they get to sue Spotify at all?

• 22:47Nilay Patel?

  They represent all the songwriters.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  But I thought Harry Fox represented all the songwriters.

• 22:50Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 22:51Speaker 03

  Well, Harry Fox is basically like a, like a phone book for all of the songwriters and they like, they handle mechanicals for every, like 90% of the market. And the, the rest of the market that they don't, they don't represent, they're supposed to be able to go out and find those people.

• 23:04Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so if you haven't been following this.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Who's gonna win?

• 23:07Nilay Patel?

  It's fine because it's crazy. Yeah. Who's gonna win? Do you think?

• 23:10Speaker 03

  Uh, I, look. I think it's probably, like, I don't, I don't like to speculate, but I think probably Spotify, but they might, they might settle. Like, they've settled, like, like, because Wixen is a spinoff of a suit that's settled, that has a different spinoff, and the, that, the, the suit that it's a spinoff of, off of, like, they settled that one for forty-three million, and that was a spinoff of another settlement for thirty million. So it's like, there's, there's layers and layers upon these suits where people are alleging more or less the same things. They're like, "Where are our mechanicals? Where did our mechanicals go?" And Spotify's like, "Ah, we have them somewhere here. Here, have several millions of dollars."

• 23:49Nilay Patel?

  Here's thirty million dollars. Does it work this way? It doesn't work this way in other countries, right? It's simpler?

• 23:55Speaker 03

  I really do not want to get into it. I barely, like, I barely understand what's going on here. I don't know what's going on in France.

• 24:04Speaker 02

  Is this a uniquely, uh, Spa- is Spotify the only one accused of losing mechanicals? Because there's also, you, you, you compare to iTunes a lot in your piece, but you're talking about, like, purchasing songs on iTunes. But like, there's Apple Music, there's Tidal, there are other streaming services in this weird, not radio, not downloads.

• 24:22Speaker 03

  Well, maybe those lawsuits are coming. Maybe a big wave of lawsuits are coming. But I will say, the R A double A and the N P double, the N M P A, so that's the, all right, the recording industry, and the, the song publishers, so like, the songwriters and the recording artists, right? Like, but, you know, the, the guys in suits, essentially. They sued, they were, they settled back, uh, like, something like ten years ago. They had their own settlement because, uh, the songwriters accused the record labels of, of not paying their mechanicals. So it's just, yeah, it's on and on forever.

• 24:56Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so, it's a, this, if you, this is crazy. No, no, I want-

• 25:01Speaker 02

  Another question?

• 25:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, go ahead.

• 25:02Speaker 02

  This is kind of tangential, but this mu- music modernization thing, would, will this make sampling easier? Because what, one thing that bothers me is that, like, the big artists that can afford the really fancy samples get to do all the cool sampling, and like, new up-and-comers have to put everything on SoundCloud and, and not charge anybody for their music because they can't sample cool things. But if you had a perfectly automated system-

• 25:30Nilay Patel?

  No, I, I don't-

• 25:31Speaker 02

  And trickle, trickle down royalties. Think about it.

• 25:34Speaker 03

  No, because the sound recordings are different from, yeah.

• 25:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, anyway, it's all just a mess. So if you've been listening to this, we've made it sound crazy because it is. But there's a piece, uh, just a, Sarah, you might have written this as a throwaway, but it was the thing that struck me the most as I read the piece yesterday. Sarah, point out, this is why there are no music startups. You can't, you have to be at that scale with armies of lawyers in order to just navigate paying the people. And so we always talk on this show about just like monopolies and big companies and lack of competition. And there is like, you can't, if you're listening, you're like, I want to do a music startup with a better user experience.

• 26:23Nilay Patel?

  You just basically can't, right? Like, there's no way to navigate this unless you have that scale. Do you think there's a way to make it simpler?

• 26:30Speaker 03

  Woo, burn it all down and start over?

• 26:32Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 26:33Speaker 03

  Look, is that something that, something that someone noted earlier, like, how, like, how do you, how do you classify Spotify? Right? So under the law, it's an interactive streaming service.

• 26:45Speaker 03

  Kind of, I think in like previous years, it might have also classified as maybe even a digital locker at some point. There's all these terms being thrown around. None of them are in like the law, the law. Like, the reason why Spotify is on the hook for mechanicals is because technically it qualifies as a DPD, which is short for digital phono record delivery. Like, that's, that's what we're dealing with. We have like a structure that's so, you know, bits are tacked on to other bits that we're still calling things phono records. Like, that's what these technically are. We're talking about phono records versus compositions. We're talking about things that were supposed to be sheet music versus like literal records that go in gramophones.

• 27:30Speaker 03

  And you just sort of update it so that it, it's like, it kind of works, and then you update it again, and you update it again, and eventually you have this.

• 27:36Nilay Patel?

  In my heart, what I know to be true is that all of this complicated falderol is the reason it's so difficult for me to find my downloaded music in the Spotify app.

• 27:48Nilay Patel?

  Probably. Also, I think, I think like, they've also won and they're the only ones who can deal with this. So they're just like, well, stop innovating this interface.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:56Nilay Patel?

  I actually do think that's true, right? Like, they don't feel the heat. I mean, they might feel a little bit of Apple Music heat. But around the world, they don't have competition because it's so hard to do this around the world. And I keep thinking that what we should do is burn it all down. And there has been a little bit of, I mean, I, it just, there's a little bit of momentum around a new copyright law. But even that seems like it will be an iteration on this existing stuff, not a burn it all down and start over.

• 28:21Speaker 03

  Right. Yeah. No, no one's, no one wants to burn it down because when you succeed under the system, like you want to protect the system because you've figured it out. Right? Like, now, now that you've gone through, like, the, the tests and the trials and the labyrinth, uh, like, no one's coming in after you. They're all getting, like, eaten by the Minotaur. Sorry to keep making this, this metaphor even more complicated. But yeah, like, you made, you made it to the end. Now you're sitting at the top and all of your competitors have to, to go through the whole thing. The rigmarole. So like, why should you change the system and make it simpler? Why not just sit, sit pretty on top of it all?

• 28:58Nilay Patel?

  It feels like, uh, what, what I really want is for there to be a white label, like, backend that gives you access to music and does stuff.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:07Nilay Patel?

  And then, they can figure it out, and then...

• 29:11Speaker 01

  On top of the white label backend.

• 29:12Nilay Patel?

  Right. And that's always kind of how I thought it worked. Um, because, you know, for several of these, like, rights agreements, everybody gets the same deal, right? So like Spotify and Apple Music have largely the same catalog outside of exclusives because everyone just makes the same deal. Streaming TV services all largely have the same channel sections because everybody gets the same deal. But then there's this other dark world that you just can't navigate because you can't pay all of the other people. Maybe the rule should be that you, no one can record a song that they haven't written. Just like, you get your hate ones. Yeah, that's my, that's my idea. Patel for president.

• 29:45Speaker 03

  My friend replied to the article saying, uh, like, this is like when you, this is like if you opened up your television and instead of finding a bunch of electrical parts, you found, uh, trained mice flipping wooden switches. And then they all look up and yell at you to, to please leave them alone. See that they're working?

• 30:03Nilay Patel?

  Really good analogy.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 30:07Nilay Patel?

  I will say that the lawyer Twitter went crazy yesterday because people have tried to write the story and they failed. It's just really hard to understand. Sarah, you did a great job. I love the story. Please go read it on the website.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  It also has helpful animated visuals to guide you through some of this complexity. I really appreciated that.

• 30:26Nilay Patel?

  It's great. Thanks for joining us, Sarah. It was great.

• 30:29Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 30:29Nilay Patel?

  I am going to read an ad and then we're going to talk about Siri, which is another hell field.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. Burn it all down.

• 30:40Nilay Patel?

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• 31:22Nilay Patel?

  There's lots of one-pot recipes for seriously speedy cooking and minimal cleanup. And each week, there's a 20-minute meal on the Classic menu for when you really don't have more time than that. For $30 off your first week of HelloFresh, visit hellofresh.com and enter the code VERGE30, V-E-R-G-E, three zero. That's $30 off your first week of HelloFresh if you use the promo code VERGE30 at hellofresh.com. All right, we're back.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 31:47Nilay Patel?

  Big story this week about what's up with Siri and the information.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  It's an incredible story. You can, I think you can read it if you don't have a subscription by giving me your email address.

• 31:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  And this is the one.

• 31:58Nilay Patel?

  This is the one.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  To use your email address on.

• 32:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  It's super good.

• 32:02Nilay Patel?

  The information is great publication. The whole thing is deeply reported, deep dives, investigations. It sounds, so the HomePod just came out. We all did the HomePod reviews.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 32:12Nilay Patel?

  Every HomePod review is basically the same. Sounds great, pretty expensive, serious joke. Right, this is fundamentally my review. And I harp on things like, can't set two timers at once. But like, there's a million reasons Siri's not good. I would say that the, the thing that came out in the information piece that struck me was the, the fact that inside of Apple, apparently, there is an argument, a long-running argument, about whether they should just burn it all down and start Siri over, or they should try to fix the brokenness of Siri.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:40Nilay Patel?

  Which is bonkers to me.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  The even more bonkers thing is the number of...

• 32:44Nilay Patel?

  Like, since the day Siri started, they've been having that argument.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think I might be on team burn it all down. Uh, here's a, here's the thing. Uh, according to the information, um, uh, Core Siri and Spotlight are both powered by this company they, they acquired, Topsy, and Siri Data Services. Siri Data Services is based on older search technology ported over from iTunes Search, but modified for Siri.

• 33:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Paul's proud of you.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  They bet on the right horse.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  I mean, like, okay, maybe it's a cheap shot. iTunes, for all its foibles, is one of the, like, I think most widely used, like, I, there's a giant database of a corpus of data, and like, keep that data organized and make it parseable and searchable, right? Uh, I don't think that the searches you could do on iTunes are like that complex. It's like, alright, artist, this, blah, blah, blah. But when you have structured data, you can start to do really interesting things with it. And Siri, like all intelligent assistants, works way better when it's aware of structured data. Google solved this problem by looking at the web and being like, well, there's no structured data here, this sucks. And so they made their own structured data based on the web that's called Knowledge Graph.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  And so that is what allows the Google Assistant to know things, because there's no thing unless it's in a structure. Uh, which is a, our argument about semiotics, which I could make for quite a long time.

• 34:08Speaker 02

  So, if there's no structure, there's no thing. Well, but, and people have a real incentive to tag their stuff. For knowledge graph because it improves their SEO.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  Well, they've they've created a virtuous cycle in that regard. That's correct. But what's amazing is the like some of the anecdotes in this story about Siri. So when Siri was they handed it over for Scott Forstall handed over to what's his name Williamson, who had been running Maps. And apparently there's this big debate about whether or not he wanted Siri to be updated on an annual cycle like the rest of iOS or continually updated in the background. So the team's like, he wanted it once a year. Screw that guy. So they emailed them for comment and he replied via email. That's not true at all. Tech blah, blah, blah, blah. And then he he says, quote, "The man in charge of Siri for a time says, quote, "Apple employee."

• 35:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  Says, quote, former Apple employee says, quote, "After the launch, Siri was a disaster. It was slow when it worked at all. The software was riddled with serious bugs. Those problems lie entirely with the original Siri team, certainly not me." Just.

• 35:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:25Speaker 02

  Does he mean the the original Siri team before?

• 35:28Speaker 01

  Created Siri.

• 35:29Speaker 02

  Before Apple bought.

• 35:30Nilay Patel?

  And then on Twitter.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  Guy named Kitlos, who was one of the original creators of Siri.

• 35:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  Now works for Samsung. Cause they made another intelligence system.

• 35:40Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  And then Samsung bought it. Yeah.

• 35:42Nilay Patel?

  But that Kitlos, who was the CEO of Siri, responded, "This statement wholly false was made by the architect and head of the biggest launch disaster in Apple history, Apple Maps. In reality, Siri worked great at launch, but like any new platform under unexpectedly massive load required scaling adjustments and 24 hour workdays." So that everyone just blaming each other.

• 36:02Speaker 02

  Unexpected, they didn't expect to be on the top of hacker news. And so their their services crashed. How could Apple have unexpectedly massive load?

• 36:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  On anything.

• 36:15Nilay Patel?

  It's like, how many phones are we going to sell? That's how much load you're gonna have.

• 36:20Nilay Patel?

  Like, we didn't know we were gonna sell new iPhones this year, guys. Uh, this is just true of Apple right now. There's a lot of questions about the... I mean, we complain about their software every week on this show.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:32Nilay Patel?

  But this is the sort of thing where I've just seen this bubbling up on Twitter a lot recently about Forstall leaving, right? Just like, ex-Apple employees.

• 36:43Speaker 01

  Yup.

• 36:44Nilay Patel?

  Apple fans, developers, like, the sense that losing Scott Forstall is the thing that made Apple worse at software, or product designer, whatever. I... On the one hand, I like buy it, right? Like, he was a passionate guy, he was real smart, like, modeled himself after Steve, whatever. On the other hand, it's like, you know, one dude?

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, right?

• 37:09Nilay Patel?

  Like, one dude left, and like, Apple's other 100,000 employees weren't like, "We should make that good."

• 37:16Nilay Patel?

  Like, I don't, I don't know how to like, parse that, but I see that sentiment a lot.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:20Nilay Patel?

  Like, a lot of this piece is Siri went to hell after Forstall left.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:24Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, that's one of the theses of this piece. And I just, I can't quite... Well, don't they use, they use their own... Like, Tim White has to know it's not good.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  But like, okay, for example, let's see if this works now. I haven't tried this in a while. What time is it?

• 37:39Speaker 04

  I wish I could help, but you don't seem to be connected to the internet.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  Siri can't tell you what time it is.

• 37:45Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, because you're not connected to the internet.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  Because you... Get an Android phone on and ask, take, put it in airplane mode.

• 37:50Nilay Patel?

  Alexa can't set an alarm.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  You put it on airplane mode on purpose. Yeah. You, you put, you can ask the Google Assistant to do hundreds of things when it's in airplane mode.

• 37:59Speaker 02

  Alexa can't, my Wi-Fi went down the other day, and Alexa couldn't set an alarm.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  That's just weak sauce.

• 38:05Speaker 02

  It's pretty depressing. So, back to Forstall. This is one of like, the anecdotes that really stood out to me. It's talking about Forstall, who's really into it. He played around with the technology every day, and would often come into meetings and say, "Here are 10 things I found last night."

• 38:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:22Speaker 02

  And that's how I feel, that's what's always puzzled me about Siri. It's like, okay, it launched, it's not amazing. Super easy to improve. Every time you ask it something and it gets it wrong, add it to a list and then it gets better.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, there should like, there should be like an internal version of Siri with like a fix this button. And every time an Apple executive tries to use Siri to do something that doesn't work, they should be like, well, that's dumb and they get a priority fix this button.

• 38:48Nilay Patel?

  And hundreds of trained mice get to work.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  That's how software works, right? It's easy.

• 38:54Nilay Patel?

  No, I mean, like, the real question, here's, I'm just looking at Darren Fireball. Here's John Gruber's summation of the information piece on Siri. The gist of the story is that Siri has existed for seven years without cohesive leadership or product vision. And the underlying technology is a mishmash of various systems that don't work well together. If you run one of the most valuable companies in the world

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:15Nilay Patel?

  and you're out there talking about, you know, your phones are revolutionary product and AI and AR are the future. And you have machine learning papers and do all this stuff. And the face of all that effort is a product that you've given a name to and that you put in commercials.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 39:32Nilay Patel?

  And you don't know who's in charge of it and that person doesn't know what it should be. Like, who, so, like, what? Like, how do you get there?

• 39:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:43Nilay Patel?

  And like, that to me is like, just really emblematic, I think, of

• 39:47Speaker 01

  Do you think?

• 39:48Nilay Patel?

  how people think about Apple right now.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  Do you think?

• 39:51Nilay Patel?

  Because there probably is somebody in charge.

• 39:53Speaker 01

  Do you think Apple has the courage to start over?

• 39:56Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  No, I'm serious. The word is courage and they've done this. They did this to unbelievable effect with Mac, with the original macOS and the conversion to macOS 10. They handled that conversion brilliantly, like perfectly, better than anybody ever expected them to. They did an incredible job.

• 40:14Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so this goes back to the just one guy theory, right?

• 40:17Speaker 01

  I just, last, last point. macOS 10 has been like the operating system of Macs for longer than the original macOS.

• 40:23Nilay Patel?

  That's crazy. That is bonkers.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, sorry.

• 40:26Nilay Patel?

  That's hard to believe.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  You're old.

• 40:28Nilay Patel?

  No, but like this goes back to like, is it just a handful of dudes? Like, is it Avi Tivanian and Rubenstein and Forstall?

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Like, is that- Those are the dudes that-

• 40:40Nilay Patel?

  Those are the people who managed that transition at that time. But a bunch of old ex-next people.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:45Nilay Patel?

  And now they're gone, and we're looking at like, Siri can't set two timers at once.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:49Nilay Patel?

  Is that, that can't be it. Like, there-

• 40:52Speaker 01

  No.

• 40:52Nilay Patel?

  There are other smart people in the world.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  Yes, and at Apple.

• 40:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:57Nilay Patel?

  So what, like, I'm, I'm, I read this story and like, we manage, we don't manage hundreds of thousands of people, we manage like seventy.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:06Nilay Patel?

  And like, just thinking like, if we, if our core product was broken every day, like, one of those seventy people would notice.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:16Nilay Patel?

  And they would presumably try to fix it.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  Fair.

• 41:19Nilay Patel?

  Or like, tell someone.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  But we also, we also, we like, we do suffer from like, some inertia, like, we're still using Trello, not well. And like, we should switch off of it, we should optimize it.

• 41:30Nilay Patel?

  Trello was originally based on the iTunes search system.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  We should fix it. Like, we're just, our Trello has gotten very messy and very bad, but we're still using it, even though nobody likes it, everybody hates it.

• 41:39Nilay Patel?

  It's not that-

• 41:40Speaker 01

  We could fix it by cleaning it up, or we could fix it by switching to something else if we wanted to, and like, start fresh.

• 41:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  But nobody has the, like, the gumption to be like, alright everybody, I'm in charge of our productivity software now, you all have to deal with the pain of this transition, it's gonna be great.

• 41:55Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 41:55Speaker 01

  And I feel like Siri could be in the same boat, like, ugh, fixing, fixing Siri is just gonna be a lot of work.

• 42:01Nilay Patel?

  It's not like-

• 42:01Speaker 01

  And they don't want to do it.

• 42:02Nilay Patel?

  Trello is fundamentally broken, it's how we are using it is possibly not of the correct fit for the technology. Because Trello is not the product that we sell to consumers for a thousand dollars.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  Also true.

• 42:14Nilay Patel?

  I don't, it's just like, this story struck me, I really, if you're Tim Cook and there's Amazon in the world, and whether or not you care about your stock price or whatever, you are basically racing your competitor to one, be the first trillion dollar company in the world, and they're basically neck and neck.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 42:27Nilay Patel?

  Amazon might actually beat them. Amazon has all this heat around Alexa, people love it, and blah, blah, blah, blah. And you're out there.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  Except when it laughs.

• 42:34Nilay Patel?

  Except when it, that story, I don't know. Why does Alex, why did Alexa have a human laugh in it? And why was it going off accidentally? And they're like, Amazon's answer makes no sense.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Their answer is, they, they, they, they code funny things in it because it makes kids happy. And so they had a person laugh. And then they set the, uh, thing to that, to Alexa laugh. And then Alexa laugh, apparently, like there might, their, their AI for hearing hot words was screwed up. And it like, heard Alexa laugh when people said like rutabaga.

• 43:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I don't believe that. That's what I'm saying. That explanation makes no sense.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  I mean, no, the explanation makes sense. You just think it's a lie.

• 43:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 43:11Nilay Patel?

  Whatever.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  Tim Cook.

• 43:13Nilay Patel?

  Tim, you're Tim Cook.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  No, I'm not.

• 43:15Nilay Patel?

  You're a soft spoken, handsome, southern gentleman. And you're looking at Amazon. And all the heat is on voice assistants and CS is all about assistance. And now there's light switches and whatever with Alexa in it. And you've got this product that every time your phones, every time your new speaker gets reviewed, people point out, hey, Siri isn't great.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:36Nilay Patel?

  It's, it's the ding on all of your latest products. Siri is not as good as these other things. Shouldn't he be spending every day just asking, who's fixing this? Or assigning someone to fix it?

• 43:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:47Nilay Patel?

  Shouldn't Apple be publicly putting the person in charge of Siri out in front?

• 43:52Speaker 01

  He probably, he probably tried to set a reminder with Siri.

• 43:54Nilay Patel?

  He just blew it. Well, no, it's just like when Apple Maps failed, they just fired Scott Forstall.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. And Williamson, who was also running Siri.

• 44:02Nilay Patel?

  Uh, it's just like, I don't, there's something there that I don't get with Apple.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:07Nilay Patel?

  In a way that, you know, other companies we cover fail left and right.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  So the other, the other big rumor is that the next version of iOS, they were thinking about like redesigning the home screen. Maybe they touch up notifications, they do some bunch of stuff. And they decided, no, no, no. We are gonna like, just, this is gonna be like a bug fix release. We're just gonna clean up iOS a little bit. Do you think that that's code for fix Siri?

• 44:30Speaker 02

  I think it's code for the right thing that they should, because I think if you're, if you're on the Siri team, it's like, well, do you want to show up at WWDC or the next like iPhone event with some hot new features to show off? Or do you want to break everything and, and rebuild it from scratch? Which is not, I mean, that is not a, a, uh, a certainty. When you, when you are building, I, I wrote a piece a long time ago about Photoshop, based on me talking to an Adobe engineer who said, if you.

• 45:01Speaker 02

  Started Photoshop from scratch, right now, you may never arrive at the current point of Photoshop functionality. Because when you build something, when you keep on adding features, you're adding this certain quantity of complexity. And building from scratch is not a guarantee. It's a very dangerous thing to do in software.

• 45:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:23Speaker 02

  It sounds really exciting, and I get excited when I hear people are doing it. But you have this, this, this, well, what if we slip even more? You know, we're gonna spend a year not adding features while our competitors keep adding features. And by the time we're done with our rewrite, we're even further behind. And maybe, maybe our rewrite doesn't even like, isn't even a better architecture. I think there, there could be some fear like that.

• 45:50Nilay Patel?

  Look, OS 10.6 Snow Leopard was the greatest operating system ever released. And that was the one where they took a year off of features and just focused on fixing it.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 45:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. That is the truth. Also, I was ripping CDs, because we're throwing away everything in my house. And I have an external SuperDrives, and I was ripping CDs on the internal drive, in my old iMac and the SuperDrive at the same time. Uh, and I couldn't figure out why I couldn't get a CD in it. And I hit eject, and it was a pirated DVD of 10.6.

• 46:16Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 46:18Nilay Patel?

  Because I just hadn't used that drive since then. And I seriously considered installing 10.6. I was like, what if I just roll it back? Anyhow, by the way, you know something iTunes can't do? Everything. It cannot rip two CDs at once.

• 46:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:33Nilay Patel?

  Just too complicated for iTunes.

• 46:35Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 46:36Nilay Patel?

  Uh, anyway, I'm gonna read an ad, and then we've got like a special extended Paul Miller time situation gonna happen to us.

• 46:43Speaker 02

  Basically.

• 46:46Nilay Patel?

  This episode of Verchast is brought to you by SimpliSafe. SimpliSafe, a company that's been around for many years. They've transformed into the fastest-growing home security company in the nation. Now they protect over 2 million people. And they just released a brand-new home security system, the all-new SimpliSafe. This system has been rebuilt and redesigned. They've added new safeguards, protecting against power outages, down Wi-Fi, cut landlines, bats, hammers, everything in between. Those things. The all-new SimpliSafe was designed to be practically invisible, a powerful sensor so small you hardly notice them, but you know who will? Intruders. When bats throw hammers at them.

• 47:15Speaker 02

  They set this up for that joke.

• 47:18Nilay Patel?

  It really did. SimpliSafe spent years building this system, they added so much, but you still get the same fair and honest price. 24/7 protection for only $15 a month, and there's no contract. It's smaller, faster, stronger than anything they built before, but supply is very limited. So, visit simplisafe.com/verge right now to order. That is simplisafe.com/verge. Protect your home and family today.

• 47:39Nilay Patel?

  All right, Paul.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:40Nilay Patel?

  Every week, you bring us a terrifying video of you sitting on a pile of CRT tape, which is what he did last week.

• 47:48Speaker 02

  That was great.

• 47:48Nilay Patel?

  But you asked in the rundown, it says you want some extra time. What's gonna happen?

• 47:52Speaker 02

  Okay, well, I don't have, you know what? This, this, uh, like every week.

• 47:58Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 47:59Speaker 02

  Like every week, this segment will be completely different, because this one's called Untitled, because there's a lot to say and a lot going on. I've been reading a biography of Claude Shannon, the inventor or discoverer of information theory. It's called A Mind at Play. I think it really captures why I value dumb things. Because Claude Shannon, in addition to, like, inventing the information age, also, like, built unicycles and, like, maze-solving mouse robots and things like that. So, anyways, personal hero of mine. So, I just wanted to run through a few of the weird things that were a South by Southwest

• 48:39Speaker 02

  that are very exciting to me, and also some weird things that showed up on Circuit Breaker. There's a Scrabble-themed keyboard. This is very exciting, from a collaboration between Mastrop and Hasbro. It's a Scrabble aesthetic of keycaps for your...

• 48:55Nilay Patel?

  Can you rearrange them?

• 48:56Speaker 02

  Uh, well, they do have, like, triple word scores that, uh, as, as independent keycaps, so you could, like, swap out, like, your favorite letter with a triple word score. So, yes, you could definitely rearrange them.

• 49:06Nilay Patel?

  Does it score you as you type?

• 49:08Speaker 02

  I hope so, but no. Uh, let's see, what else we have? We have, uh, headphone massage. Oh, this is. Have you seen this? I have not.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  It's a, it's a pair of cans that massages your ears for you.

• 49:20Speaker 02

  Oh, my god. Relaxing, relax and, nope, relaxation innovation Nirvana. Oversized headphones that literally look like, like somebody put, you know, like some regular headphones into a jumbo sizer machine. So they're just comically oversized and they massage your ears somehow. I think that's great. That's great. I'm really excited about, Google came out with this N synth super. Have you guys seen this? No. So, Google is using its, some of its machine learning technology to meld sounds in some sort of like synthesizer. So you take two sounds, like this is the sound of a violin and this is the sound of an oboe.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  And then their machine learning combines them somehow. And so you get a grid that you can play with like four quarters. The four corners all represent different sounds. And then you use like the touchscreen to like merge between the different sounds. Unique audio and they released it as an open source project, so you can build your own. I'm hoping it will come out as like an iPad app because it's all on, in, open stuff. Uh, then at South by Southwest, there's a bread bot. It's a robot that makes bread. Love that. It's not quite pods, but it's not not pods. Yeah, you just throw in your dry ingredients, it'll measure them out for you and make.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  But the idea is like, you're, you're like, your bodega will get one of these bread bots and you can like, wake up and go, uh, and then like order like the particular bread recipe you like. And then it'll bake that bread fresh. And then you like, when you're finally ready to leave the house, you could like go and pick up the bread.

• 50:58Speaker 02

  This is very exciting to me. On-demand, robot-made bread. There is a lunality hover backpack that improves your jump height. So it's like, it's kind of like having a drone connected to a backpack, but instead of flying, because it's really dangerous to fly, you just jump higher. Which is great. I have no idea when that's gonna come out.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  Can they actually like just attach it to like an actual hiking backpack so that I don't have to carry as much weight? Cause there's a, just a, a permanent thing lifting it via a drone?

• 51:33Speaker 02

  See, that's so smart, cause exoskeleton, well, see, the thing is you're gonna run out of battery probably pretty quick.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  You think so?

• 51:39Speaker 02

  But exoskeletons, I wonder if that would be more efficient than an exoskeleton?

• 51:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:45Nilay Patel?

  How many jumps do you get with a hover backpack?

• 51:48Speaker 02

  It's not like a finished product.

• 51:49Nilay Patel?

  I see. Okay.

• 51:50Speaker 02

  I'm hopefully a lot.

• 51:52Nilay Patel?

  That's my new favorite.

• 51:53Speaker 02

  How many, how many jumps?

• 51:54Nilay Patel?

  Like stat, like spec?

• 51:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:57Nilay Patel?

  You know, it's like the new screen to body ratio is jumps.

• 51:59Speaker 02

  Jumps, jumps per charge.

• 52:00Nilay Patel?

  Jumps per charge.

• 52:01Speaker 02

  JPC.

• 52:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I'm looking for about 10 JPC.

• 52:05Speaker 02

  Bose made AR sunglasses, but instead of augmenting your vision, they augment your hearing.

• 52:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 52:11Speaker 02

  So they could possibly like describe what you're looking at. So that's exciting.

• 52:15Nilay Patel?

  It's pretty good.

• 52:16Speaker 02

  I don't know. I just feel like we're in a real, and then Sony made a weird projector so that you can feel like you're a mosquito.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  No, the projector's really cool though, cause it, it uses that, that dope little.

• 52:27Nilay Patel?

  They really got Paul, by the way.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  A dope little laser projector?

• 52:30Speaker 02

  The Vive tracker? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like a Pico projector.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  This is a little Sony Pico projector, which I have and it's great. And then they, they attach it to motion tracking and then it shows, like as you look around, it shows you a projection of what a mosquito would see if you were a mosquito, basically?

• 52:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:45Speaker 02

  It's very exciting. Also, I wrote a, a piece recently about the joys of projecting a horse on your friend.

• 52:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:51Speaker 02

  So it really spoke to me in that sense.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  It's really like, it's, it's AR, but it's a different kind of AR.

• 52:56Nilay Patel?

  I'm proud of us for just walking right by the joys of projecting a horse on your friend, as though that was a totally normal thing for Paul to say.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  I published it on the verge.com.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  It is a totally normal thing for Paul to say.

• 53:08Nilay Patel?

  It's true.

• 53:10Speaker 02

  Anyways, I'm just excited. Congratulations to all these companies for making really weird stuff. That has limited utility, but I think could inspire the next generation.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  You know, we were on the Circuit Breaker show this week. We did emotional text reports. People called us.

• 53:26Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  One of our callers was, this guy is like, I'm really frustrated with phones.

• 53:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:31Speaker 01

  And we lasered in on was that phones are so exciting for so long that he feels betrayed by.

• 53:37Nilay Patel?

  There's no, there's no thrill left.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 53:39Nilay Patel?

  So they're trying to come up for other things that he could be into. I suggested that he should just go to Canon forums and tell them he's a Nikon fan.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 53:46Nilay Patel?

  That's just waiting for you.

• 53:48Speaker 02

  You're saying he needs more drama.

• 53:49Nilay Patel?

  He needs more drama.

• 53:50Speaker 02

  Wait, I'd love to hear your-

• 53:52Nilay Patel?

  It's like your favorite show got canceled and now you just have a Galaxy S9.

• 53:55Speaker 02

  Dieter, what's like one section of this technology industry that like feels like hip and exciting to you? Where like every couple of weeks, there's a new development.

• 54:03Speaker 01

  Every couple of weeks?

• 54:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's what phones used to be.

• 54:06Speaker 01

  I don't know if it's every couple of weeks.

• 54:07Nilay Patel?

  Every couple of days HTC, in 2009 HTC put out a phone. They're like, here's another one.

• 54:14Speaker 02

  Check out these sick widgets.

• 54:18Nilay Patel?

  By the way, this is still true of phones in countries like India. It's just here, whatever.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  We get the three.

• 54:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 54:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, I think that weird tablet laptop hybrid computer thingamajigs are still interesting to me.

• 54:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  Like, what's the hinge gonna do? How do you get the keyboard out? How do you hide the keyboard? Can you get rid of the keyboard? Does, can you touch the screen? How do you touch the screen? What operating system does it run? Does it run mobile apps? Like, all that's like, like, nobody's doing a good job of it. Nobody is doing a good job of it. And that's, but everybody knows, they can see in their mind's eye what a good job would look like.

• 54:54Nilay Patel?

  Mm-hmm.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  And so they're like, if we did that, it'd be amazing. So we're gonna do this.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  Which is not that. But people might think it's that. And in the meantime, maybe we'll figure it out.

• 55:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  That is the story of like every tablet touchscreen thing right now.

• 55:11Nilay Patel?

  By the way, Dieter is currently using a Surface Pro.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  I am. I used an iPad Pro for a while. I used a Pixelbook for a while. I used a touch bar on a Mac for a while. Yeah.

• 55:23Speaker 02

  I, uh, I am-

• 55:25Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my GPU's on. Just in case anybody was wondering.

• 55:27Speaker 02

  I'm using an iPad Pro. Trying to make it my daily driver.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  Uh, please don't do that ever again. Don't, don't say I'm using iPad Pro. Use the the. We're not Apple. We use articles when we refer to their products. I love you.

• 55:41Nilay Patel?

  I think you just mumbled it.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 55:42Nilay Patel?

  I'll be honest with you.

• 55:43Speaker 02

  I'm using iPad Pro.

• 55:45Nilay Patel?

  God damn.

• 55:47Speaker 02

  It just seems weird for me. I don't think I would have said that. I'm using the iPad Pro and if Apple added a USB C plug in addition to the Lightning plug.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  Why, why in addition? Just, just switch it over to USB C.

• 56:00Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 56:00Speaker 01

  It'd be so much better.

• 56:02Speaker 02

  I just thought that'd be cool.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  That's great.

• 56:06Speaker 01

  I will say, uh, using a Surface, um, like multiple times on this trip, I've been like, oh, I need to charge this other thing that I have. Oh, wait, I don't have the USB C charger that I use to charge everything else in my life. It's infuriating.

• 56:21Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. I like add a switch. I was like, I gotta charge the switch. Oh, I didn't bring, oh, okay. I'll trickle charge it off the Surface, I guess.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  Cause I didn't have like a big USB C power brick.

• 56:32Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, I gotta get one of those.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:33Speaker 02

  I'm thinking about it.

• 56:34Speaker 01

  I normally just have like a big USB power brick with a one USB C, one USB A. And, uh, that will charge a laptop. It'll charge my switch. It charges my phone. It's great.

• 56:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:46Speaker 01

  And then you accidentally plug your USB C headphones into it. It's a wild experience. Okay. Sadly, we are out of time on this episode.

• 56:53Speaker 02

  How's that? I was gonna try to drop the article, but how's that iPad Pro is like a totally fun thing. How, how iPad? How iPad am I? I'm pretty iPad right now.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  I am, uh, inappropriately excited for the Fitbit Versa. It's gonna be terrible.

• 57:11Speaker 02

  Oh, we didn't talk about the Fitbit.

• 57:13Speaker 01

  I am inappropriately excited for it because it's a little bit pebble-esque and it's a, a smart watch that might actually be cross-platform, which I know nobody really cares about, but I care about. Um, and it's cheap.

• 57:24Speaker 02

  Two hundred bucks?

• 57:24Speaker 01

  And it looks really, really ugly, but.

• 57:26Speaker 02

  It looks a lot like an Apple watch.

• 57:28Speaker 01

  I'm married to somebody who wears a Fitbit Charge 2 every single day and I, I'm gonna ask her, I'm gonna show her a picture today and we'll see what she says.

• 57:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay.

• 57:34Speaker 01

  Cause the, the smallness of the Charge 2 is what attracts her to it. I'm always like, do you want an Apple watch? She's like, no, I just wanted to count my steps. Leave me alone. Anyway, that's it.

• 57:43Nilay Patel?

  But, there's other great shows to listen to. Why'd you push that button? Also, it was live at South by Southwest last week. They did a new episode on whether technology enables ghosting. A wild episode. They had the head sociologist from Bumble was there. She had like actual science. The head of iOS engineering for OkCupid was there. Great show, great episode. Listen to that. Lauren Good is doing Versus again. That's on YouTube, her series where head to head. She did Kindle versus RealBooks today, I think, which is wild. She also does a great podcast called Two Versus Ask. Kara Swisher. Kara Swisher does Recode Decode. Peter Kafka does Recode Media. All of that is available on Apple Podcasts and Google Play and Spotify. Everywhere podcasts are served, you just go.

• 58:24Speaker 02

  The Apple Podcasts.

• 58:25Nilay Patel?

  The Apple Podcasts. And Apple Podcasts. Find a podcast app and then download our shows. It'll be great for everyone. I insist. You tweet at us, you can talk to us. I'm Reckless, Paul's future Paul, Dearest Backlon, Sarah, Sarah Jong. Sarah's got a great Twitter feed. You should go to that and read her article because it's great. Thank you to her for being on. And that's it. We'll see you next week.

• 58:46Speaker 02

  Rock and roll.

• 58:48Nilay Patel?

  Promo code.

• 58:48Speaker 02

  An appaul. The Paul.