Updated Macbook Pros, Microsoft Surface Go, and this week in Elon

This week on The Vergecast, Nilay and Dieter discuss an Apple event they were invited to this week for Apple’s updated MacBook Pros. Along with Paul, they dive into how creatives are using these machines, and what these new specs are. Another laptop announcement from this week is Microsoft’s Surface Go. The crew runs through their demo with the computer and discuss how it compares to the other Surface devices. And continuing with our trend, we also have a new edition of “This week in Elon Musk,” hosted by science editor Liz Lopatto. There’s a lot more in between that — like Paul’s newly sponsored segment “Hearrings” — so listen to it all, and you’ll get it all. 01:36 - 10 years of app store 05:12- Apple’s new MacBook Pros have the latest Intel processors and quieter keyboards 21:58 - Apple worked with Blackmagic on a new external GPU 33:09 - This week in Elon Musk with Liz Lopatto 38:20 - Microsoft’s $399 Surface Go aims to stand out from iPads or Chromebooks 45:49 - Magic Leap is shipping its first headset this summer 51:56 - Justice Department appeals ruling in attempt to block massive AT&T–Time Warner merger 57:24 - Paul’s weekly segment “Hearrings” 1:00:23 - YouTube TV goes down (again) during World Cup 1:02:43 - Xbox One is getting Dolby Vision support 1:03:32 - Apple will end its photo printing operation in September 1:06:55 - This amazing new web tool lets you create microsites that exist solely as URLs 1:08:09 - This app reads Wikipedia to teach you about the cities you’re driving through 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, welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of theverge.com and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, the network that you're listening to. I'm trying to be professional today. You started out pure Adderall and then you went like... Doubt. The Adderall to doubt spectrum there was deep. Now, I was thinking about it today as I was walking in the office. What if The Vergecast was like a regular show, like a good show? We'd have like an intro, you know, like "This Week on The Vergecast, sponsored by blah blah." Like, it would be that. And I'd be like, "Hey, everybody, welcome to the..." And I thought I would do it, and I just utterly failed. Anyway, I'm your friend, Eli. Paul Miller is here. Hello. Dieter Bone.

• 0:49Nilay Patel?

  Not your friend. We have like a dense show today. So, there's not a lot of things happen, but all the things that happened were deep. So, it's not like a grab bag. It's like a very focused, deep dive into things. We have Liz Lapato is gonna do "This Week in Elon" for us, which makes me very happy. "This Week in Elon," I think, will become the truest recurring segment. I feel like Elon heard "This Week in Elon." It's like, "Well, I gotta give him a week." Exactly. I gotta do it. And then, you know, it's not like us to call out the sponsors and give them free stuff, but Paul's segment is sponsored this week, which is incredible. Just you wait. You're gonna wanna buy so much quality product. Yeah, it's gonna be great.

• 1:34Nilay Patel?

  Very soon. Okay, let's begin. So, a lot of Apple news this week. It was the 10-year anniversary of the App Store, and Apple celebrated by releasing slightly faster laptops, as far as I can tell. No, they did a whole thing. It was 10 years of the App Store. They did a whole piece. Apple does editorial now, which is like a very interesting thing for them to do. So, they did a whole thing about what apps look like. We did a whole thing about what apps look like, a bunch of Macs. I'd said, "Here's my..." Apps have gotten uglier and less information-dense over time, and I think that is absolutely wild. And that, from all of the things that we looked at over that 10-year period, the one screenshot that stuck out to me, I think Dan... Tweeted at, it was in 95 Mac, I think. The Facebook app used to show you five posts on a 3.5 inch screen. And now it barely shows you one.

• 2:19Nilay Patel?

  And everything else is like interface cruft.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  I don't know that I agree that they've gotten uglier.

• 2:23Nilay Patel?

  They've definitely gotten uglier.

• 2:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't agree.

• 2:26Nilay Patel?

  They've gotten more refined in like one particular way.

• 2:29Speaker 02

  Are you saying you missed the felt?

• 2:31Nilay Patel?

  They have, they have far less character. They all definitely look the same now. And that sameness, I think is, it's more, it's more refined in one axis. But on another axis, it's, it's definitely a little bit.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  It's all on brand in a way.

• 2:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, everything is, Kyle Checo is a great writer. He's written for us, he's written for, he's termed this airspace. Like, everything looks like an Airbnb in a nice city. Everything everywhere is just like weird minimal aesthetic. And that's every app too. And like, that loss of character to me is like, just looking at all the screenshots really, really came through. But anyway, that's not really the Apple news. I just wanted to intro the MacBooks by saying it was 10 years the App Store.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  I will say one thing about the, about the anniversary is it made me a little bit nostalgic for that period right before the App Store. When people were making a bunch of homebrew apps and we figured out how to get them on the phone. We played Lights Out and the Tap Tap Revolution game. There were, there were like, there were a handful of games and apps that were native that you could get if you knew what you're doing. And it really felt like you were like in the cool kids' club. And it didn't require a ton of work to get into the cool kids' club. In a way that if you, if you want to hack an iPhone now and do something that's outside the bounds of the App Store. Man, have fun. That's like, that's not as easy as it used to be. And like, there's trade offs there. It's more secure, et cetera, et cetera.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  But nevertheless, it's the barrier to entry to like hack away on the thing you own is much higher now.

• 3:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and the excitement about jailbreaking the first phone did not come with an entire body of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence and concerns about Russian election hacking that they just, it just absolutely does now.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:11Nilay Patel?

  It was a sweeter innocent time.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:13Nilay Patel?

  Dieter was our competitor at that time. I don't even remember this.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  I was.

• 4:16Nilay Patel?

  A fierce competitor over there at the Mobile Nations.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  I ran a database of homebrew software for the Palm Pre, not for the iPhone.

• 4:23Nilay Patel?

  Wow. Anyway, what were you going to say, something?

• 4:26Speaker 02

  Well, I just wanted to say that I celebrated the anniversary by downloading a clicker game last night. Me and my roommate played it competitively for about five hours straight.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  All right. So I just, to me, that's where the app store is at. It's like, this clicker game is so good. It's so refined. There's been years of clicker game ideas. And this is like a melding of them and taking a little bit of this, a little bit of that. And it'll pinch it in. It's beautiful and seamless.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  And then it asks you for a $40 ad purchase to go to the next level before 30 minutes?

• 4:57Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  Well, no, no, no. No, no waiting. No, they got, they've got it down. They've got it down.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  I believe you. What was the clicker game called?

• 5:05Speaker 02

  Almost a Hero.

• 5:06Nilay Patel?

  That's not the ad for Paul Segman. That's just, that's a real endorsement.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  Come at me with your almost a hero prestige.

• 5:12Nilay Patel?

  All right, here's the real news. New laptops. Dieter was in town. We went to the Apple event together yesterday. It was, I think Dieter used the phrase shock and awe to describe this event.

• 5:23Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 5:23Nilay Patel?

  So usually when a company spec bumps a laptop, they put out a press release. Maybe they'll send you one, but you understand what's happening, which is that Intel released new processors.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 5:34Nilay Patel?

  And then on some timeline.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  Right.

• 5:37Nilay Patel?

  They've got put into a laptop. If you're a PC manufacturer, that timeline is like 20 minutes. If you're Apple, it's four years. But on some timeline, there were new Intel chips and they were placed into your laptop.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, that, that timeline's super important that if it were par for the course for there to be a new Intel chip and then a beat and then Apple releases laptops that have the new Intel chip, they absolutely could have just done a press release. But they don't do that. And so they had to do something bigger.

• 6:05Nilay Patel?

  So Apple had a huge event space here in New York. They had this just series of incredibly impressive people who use Macs in their creative work. So we met the director of the Despacito video and his editor, who were super cool. We met an 18 year old who coded an app to help his autistic brother communicate better using icons like read words to you. Super cool. Uh, really, it's incredibly impressive kid.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:34Nilay Patel?

  Uh, we met another 18 year old who, she's going to Stanford in the fall. She started an academy to teach, uh, kids how to code. And she built a VR app that helps you have empathy for people with schizophrenia. Like, just like the most impressive people. We met the guy who produced a bunch of songs with Alicia Keys and Alessia Cara and Rihanna, won a bunch of Grammys.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  Is that why the trumpet is in The Verge?

• 6:58Nilay Patel?

  That was a different guy. That was a young guy who has a record deal and he showed us how he writes trumpet music. I mean, he has like a pop, he's like a pop guy, but he's like, I'm gonna write a trumpet solo in real time with you. And he showed it like looping Logic and recording multiple tracks and like comping them together. We saw, I mean, I can just keep going. This was a long time.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  There were 12, there were a total of 12 different demos and it, uh, it was, they said, it'll probably take something a little over two hours. We ended up being there for over three for sure.

• 7:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And, and nothing against these people. They're all incredibly impressive and every single one of them, there's a, like a Verge story to write about them. Here's how technology is enabling this really cool neuroscientist to map how brains work and see elegance using Unity. That's cool. Here's, uh, here's an artist who's making gigapixel photography using like a robotic camera tripod.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  Super, like. Here's a scientist that has taken all of the dirt cheap parts that are getting made by the millions for smartphones and repurposing them to create portable air quality, uh, monitors so that people can strap them on and go about their day and it measures where they are and with via GPS. And then they can, down to like the block, identify where the worst air pollution is and then use that to identify the sources of that air pollution.

• 8:17Nilay Patel?

  Beautiful. I mean, come on. I mean, it was, and so we're in these demos. They've all had the new laptops for some time, unclear. And you can't really come at like a genius 18-year-old and be like, did the faster laptop really help you? You just have to be like, you're wonderful and I hope that you are put in charge of something very soon. Uh, and you can't really, so it was like that.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  You also can't ask them, aren't you glad Apple waited to get it right?

• 8:49Nilay Patel?

  And then, so I just, I wanna make it very clear that the demos and the people we met were incredibly impressive. And, you know, and that verge world of like, technology helps you make culture, the culture, like, right in our lane. Yeah. But that wasn't the story. Right. The story was that there's 8th gen Intel processors in a laptop that looks exactly the same as the old laptop, that runs the same software. With Radeon graphics. With Radeon graphics.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  Radeon graphics.

• 9:23Nilay Patel?

  And now there's a T2 chip that manages the boot sequence and Touch ID. And you just, connecting those things, I looked at all the coverage, was just hard. Our friend Lauren Good was there. Quieter keyboards. So that's like, so that's the main thing. So.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:38Nilay Patel?

  We just wanna set this stage.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  I do wanna talk a little bit more about the T2 chip on the Vergecast that I did in the post, cuz it does deserve more credit than we just, than we've given.

• 9:45Nilay Patel?

  But I just wanna set this up. So before we go to meet all these impressive people, you know, Dieter and I are sitting on a couch and Lauren was sitting across, and they were just going through the specs. Like, here's the laptop, and then we're gonna meet all these impressive people. All of us are just like, keyboard, talk about the keyboard. And they're like, we made it quieter. People love the keyboard, we made it quieter. And like, like Lauren and I like, looked at each other, and then both like, deferred, like, are you gonna, are you gonna ask?

• 10:15Nilay Patel?

  And Lauren's like, did you make it more reliable? And they were like, you know, not a lot of them break, actually. People love them, it's about the same. We think, we think it'll be about the same. And both of us were like, we looked at each other again, like, would you like to ask the follow up? We could've just like, attacked. So that, that's the, the story with the MacBook is, they've had problems with the keyboard. Casey Johnson of the Hatline is, again, a person who's been driving this story. There's a class action lawsuit about the keyboard. They have a four-year repair extension on these keyboards, and their answer is, it's not that big of a problem. Most people love them.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  The size of the problem from Apple's perspective, it's like a, on a vast beach of laptops. It's like one or two tiny grains of sand. But it turns out that one or two tiny grains of sand can really ruin your experience. Keep your whole keyboard from working.

• 11:05Nilay Patel?

  Uh, well, I mean, they sell a lot of laptops. So even on a, on a, on a relative basis, right? You're like, it's a fractional percentage, but on absolute basis.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  It was a running joke. It was a meme. It was so obvious.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  Here's how much Apple didn't want to talk about this issue. Not only did they not address the repair stuff, um, towards the end of the event, I was like, okay. So you made it quieter. How'd you make it quieter? What'd you do to make it quieter? We don't want to talk about that.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  It took all the sand out.

• 11:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they were like, uh, they're like, we're sure someone will tear it down and figure it out. Which is probably, it's actually a correct answer. Like someone else can do that work. We're, we're not going to tell you. But I, that to me is like the real split. There are so many things to talk about with the actual product. And in many ways, rightfully, Apple sees it as itself as a company that doesn't just make laptops. They make these like tools that enable people to do great things and they want to focus on that.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  But it's so interesting to me that this whole context, because this is, what I've been arguing is like that just Apple needs to put a, make a box that holds an Nvidia GPU and a modern Intel processor. Just buy, go to Newegg, go to PC Part Picker and make a computer for professionals.

• 12:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  And the idea is that professionals use their tools in novel ways.

• 12:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 12:26Speaker 02

  They are creative and focused and expert and they can figure it out. And you don't have to design their entire experience for them like you might want to do with a more consumer product.

• 12:39Nilay Patel?

  But, but very few laptops are constructed that way. So this is an event about laptops and I will say throughout all of these demos, we saw a bunch of stuff that Apple doesn't usually show anybody. We saw a lot of professionals getting into that file system and just doing a bunch of file system stuff. And like moving a bunch of badly named files from one window into another. You know, like they were doing, they were showing us the work.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:03Nilay Patel?

  And so I, I appreciate that and I appreciate that Apple is like clear about what the Mac should do versus what the iPad should do. And there was no, there was no babying of. The computer usage here. We were seeing real people who actually do the work. Apple was very insistent that they hadn't paid them. They'd all just volunteered to come be a part of this thing. And they were showing us how they do their work. So that's great. I just think that actual computer is not like, that's not that story. Right? Like Dieter and I always argue about instruments versus tools. You made a great video, great processor video about how you should call it your technology instruments. And to me, this whole event was the best argument ever that they're just tools.

• 13:45Nilay Patel?

  Like you could take away the laptop they had and put in a different laptop and they would probably get to the same end result.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:52Nilay Patel?

  Right? And like they don't have, and I think that that was the big disconnect, but we should actually talk about the laptop. So Dieter, you want to start with the T2 chip?

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Sure. I guess it's a random place to start, but the, so the T2 chip, the, the, the thing that they did beyond the Intel processors, which well, I guess we'll get into later is they, they took the internals of these things and made them basically operate from like a system level in a similar way to the way the iMac Pro works, which is that there's this T2 chip and it controls the touch bar. It controls the encryption on the SSD, which means that you can have faster encryption because they can do hardware encryption stuff. It, it does a bunch of other like random security stuff and, and that is the thing that allows them to just add a bunch of extra, I don't know, security and just moving stuff around in there.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  So they did that. And also I think it's the thing that allows them to control the True Tone display. So it's basically, I think it's basically a little iOS chip in there. So that, that gives them True Tone on the display and also on the touch bar.

• 14:57Nilay Patel?

  That's great. I love that. That's like the most Apple thing.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was talking to, I think I was talking to Sam Byford and my notes said, my notes from the, the meeting were like, oh, and there's True Tone on the touch bar lol. Like, cause I didn't care. And he's like, no, thank God. Thank God. It would be so annoying to have a True Tone display and not a True Tone touch bar. And then, yeah, I don't know, like, higher levels for max RAM, better RAM, higher levels for max storage, they, that higher RAM takes, often takes up more power, and so they increased the watt hours on both the 15 and the 13 inch, significantly more, apparently, on the 13 inch, but they're saying that the overall battery life is going to end up being a wash because of that higher power draw.

• 15:43Speaker 02

  What if you get less RAM, but do they put less battery in if you get less RAM?

• 15:47Speaker 01

  I don't think so. No, I think it's just the battery's the battery's the battery. But they didn't fundamentally re-architect the thing. So they made the keyboard quieter, but presumably you've got to, like, completely replace it if it breaks. They didn't add new ports, they didn't add Face ID, they didn't change the screen so it has fewer bezels, they didn't add touch to the screen, because that, that's never ever gonna happen for us.

• 16:08Nilay Patel?

  No 4K screens on these laptops.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:10Nilay Patel?

  And I think no, the color profile thing, it's still not the full gamut.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  I mean, it was just fine for me. That's the compromise I would make if I was building a laptop custom.

• 16:20Nilay Patel?

  They did say, which I think is really interesting, running Turtone has a minor effect on battery life that the bigger battery will compensate for. And I think it's because they're actively controlling the brightness in a, like, super aggressive way.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 16:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's just like, it's a lot.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. We should get into the processors, but the, the main thing that's interesting to me is how aggressively Apple is focusing on talking to pro users. It's the Behind the Mac campaign, they had the iMac Pro, they had the whole long thing that we know we promised the Mac Pro is coming, we've got these new MacBook Pros, but they didn't update the 13 inch MacBook Escape that doesn't have a touch bar, that's the same, and they didn't update the MacBook Air, and I didn't even mention that they didn't update the Mac Mini, because why would they do that? There have been rumors that, like, there's updates for that, that stuff coming, but what's fascinating to me is, like, the thing, the, the, the most successful Mac of all time, I firmly believe, is the 13 inch MacBook Air, right?

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Like, I don't, I don't think you can really argue with that. It is, it was the best laptop for at least half a decade.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  Do you think they thought the MacBook would be the...

• 17:28Nilay Patel?

  I'm just gonna point this out.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  The successor.

• 17:30Nilay Patel?

  The MacBook Air is on sale today. They canceled the 2015 MacBook Pro, which is the MacBook I have.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  On sale as in like deals, deals, deals?

• 17:38Nilay Patel?

  No, you can just buy, you can just spend a thousand dollars and buy a brand new MacBook Air today.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:43Nilay Patel?

  You will not get a retina display. This thing is crazy.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  What's the processor in that?

• 17:49Nilay Patel?

  It's a 1.8 gigahertz dual core Intel i5.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  Womp womp.

• 17:54Nilay Patel?

  It's not a fast computer, but they still sell it because people still want this thing.

• 17:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:58Nilay Patel?

  Anyway.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  All that'll come hopefully in October. It better, because that's, that's the big question to me is, at what, like, all this Pro talk is great. I love Pros. We're gonna, we're gonna have Pros look at this laptop and we review it. We're gonna get into it, but if you want a good thousand dollar Mac, the question is, does Apple really want to sell that to you anymore? Or do they want you to buy an iPad?

• 18:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and I don't know the answer to that question at all, because the iPad is still, it's still not quite there. I think they know that. There's also a rumor iPad refresh coming this fall, and it's back to school time. So it's really weird to not put out a...

• 18:34Speaker 02

  Oh, you're right. It is back to, oh, man, they're gonna miss the window.

• 18:37Nilay Patel?

  It's really weird to not have the, the computer for back to school.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  It's not like Apple doesn't know when Intel comes out with new chips. I just don't see how this is so hard. Refresh your laptops when Intel releases new chips. Is that, is that bowing and scraping to Intel? Is that like hurt their pride?

• 18:54Speaker 01

  I do think that Apple wanted to not have the expectation that they have to refresh their Macs every year. Like, I really do believe that Apple doesn't think that the newest Intel chips every year, year in, year out, is a must buy. They, they think that their Macs can still be good with a slightly older chip, and they don't want people to have the mindset that if it doesn't have the latest chip, it's therefore bad. But I also think that they've taken that philosophy a little too far.

• 19:24Nilay Patel?

  But let me, that point is well taken, and I, I understand why, because you presumably have to do the work to like, update the computer for the new processor and that work is costly, but they're the richest company in the world. They, they will one day, at the rate they're going, have literally a trillion dollars in cash.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  I don't think this is really difficult hardware to support either.

• 19:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's, that part is confusing. It's just generally confusing to me. But I think it comes down to, they know who, the Mac users they need. Are pros because pros make the apps, they make the videos, they build the halo around the brand.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 20:02Nilay Patel?

  They can get, you know, they, when they do the behind the scenes, when they do the behind the Mac campaign and Grimes is in it, she's using a Mac and like that creates a Apple halo.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 20:14Nilay Patel?

  The consumers they don't need that they already have are the people who are just like buying iPhones and like hate their Windows laptop. And maybe they'll sell you an iPad. They don't, it's like, there's just not enough action at this part of the Mac. Even if you look at Mojave, Mojave is like dark mode and folder and finder stacks and file management systems.

• 20:36Speaker 02

  Were most of these pros, they were showing, so you said Unity, but there was like Logic and stuff. Cause I just wonder how much of it is like, are you hostage? Are you a Mac hostage? That's what I really want to know from people. Are you a Mac hostage or, or just like, this is, this is what I vastly prefer?

• 20:54Nilay Patel?

  No, so we, they got asked a bunch of those questions because like, again, what else are you really going to ask?

• 21:00Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 21:01Nilay Patel?

  Like, why do you, why do you like your Mac? Genius.

• 21:04Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 21:04Nilay Patel?

  Like, what else are you going to do? And, you know, all of them said something along the lines of, I've always used Macs. I love Macs. That, the neuroscientist told us, like, I have had Apple products since my 2GS Steve Wozniak special edition.

• 21:20Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 21:21Nilay Patel?

  And then he like looked around and was like, does anybody know what that is? And some of us were like, I'm a big nerd.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  I know what that is.

• 21:27Nilay Patel?

  So like, all of that was cool, right? Like they, they were in it and some of them, some of, some of them told us like, I think it was the molecular biologist said she had a PC, like basically a gaming PC to do some of the rendering she does. And then the Apple people are like, time to, time to go on.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  Ah.

• 21:45Nilay Patel?

  So like, I, it wasn't that, I think they're, they honestly prefer these tools. And then once you are, you're not held hostage by a tool that you're really comfortable with. It empowers you because you don't have to think about it. And that was like a message that they were all sending.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:57Nilay Patel?

  But that, again, it's like, we, we've slid back into talking about this event instead of the laptops. So like the Radeon GPUs, like, they released an eGPU that they developed with Blackmagic.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  Blackmagic.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  And it's a very confusing product to me.

• 22:12Nilay Patel?

  It is $6.99. It has four USB 3 ports on the back with USB A connectors.

• 22:18Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 22:19Nilay Patel?

  You can obviously power your laptop.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  It has like two USB C plugs on the back.

• 22:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And I was like, but what are these USB A connectors for? And they're like, we wanted to build it so it would just support the Vive. Like, they built it so that you could run the Vive off of it. And I was like, why don't you use Nvidia cards? Like, it's always AMD. Like, where's your Nvidia card? And their answer was AMD is really in the Metal, which is their graphics subsystem. And so like, we do really tight hardware-software integration with Metal. And I was like, but, you know, Nvidia has drivers, right?

• 22:48Speaker 02

  I mean, that's the other thing where, I mean, it's pretty wonky, but that's the other thing where Apple is really ostracizing developers. I mean, the world has basically converged on Vulkan. And Apple has decided to go its own way with Metal. And like, like, developers are like writing like shims between them. And they're doing a lot of extra work that seems like it wouldn't have to be. I don't know. It seems like it wouldn't have to be necessary, but, but Apple could at least do developers the service of officially supporting Vulkan. So developers don't have to duplicate all their work. Like, if you're, if your idea is that you're creating computers and software to support people to get things done.

• 23:31Speaker 02

  Hey, guess what? People are making things with Vulkan. Support Vulkan, and now they can accelerate it on the Mac. Now your products can help people do the thing. Like, it's just, it's like, Apple's way of helping you is, oh, you have to write for a different shader language? I don't know. It's just.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  Well, what if theirs is better?

• 23:53Speaker 02

  It very well might be.

• 23:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  It's.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  I don't, I really, I have no way of technically comparing Metal and Vulkan. But Vulkan is the standard.

• 24:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  And Metal is Apple's little baby.

• 24:10Nilay Patel?

  It is. But they did point out Nvidia can release drivers and support eGPUs and Nvidia can do that if they want. And it's all officially supported in Mojave now. And so like, that's like a thing, like when Apple talks about iOS products, they do not talk about open driver support. They don't, right, like, I think they have a sense of what the Mac is in that way. Like, it is the thing where you can buy a box and plug in a GPU and if the vendor drives a driver, it'll work. At least that's still there. I think there was a moment when people really worried that Apple was just gonna leave all of that behind. Right? And they're just gonna close the thing and focus on the phone.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  And Mojave's idea of, let's pour iOS apps to the Mac instead of turning the Mac into iOS. I feel like that was a really good signal to me in that sense.

• 24:58Nilay Patel?

  So Dieter, you're always talking about the future of computers. And it's funny, just talking about this right now, the lack of processor updates, the sort of thousand dollar hole in the middle of the lineup. This is just where that ARM Mac would land, right? You've got the big Intel workstation eGPU situation at the high end for pros. And your consumer product is ARM Mac with great battery life, better performance than the low end Intel CPUs. This ability to run versions of iOS apps that you're already familiar with. I mean, this is the zone, right?

• 25:32Speaker 01

  But so the question there is how long is that gonna take? Cause I've had this idea that they're, they don't like the way that the Intel chips are constructed, that they're unhappy with Intel, they don't trust them, blah, blah, blah. There's lots of reasoning for, for that. We've talked about it in the past. But how long can they hold out until the Mac software ecosystem is ready for those ARM laptops?

• 25:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  I worry about that. Like, they've, they've got a long time without having a really good thousand dollar laptop. Like, I love the MacBook. I'd love it, but it is just a little bit too underpowered. And I don't know. They'll spec bump it, it'll be fine, but it's just kind of dangerous place to be fallow. It's precisely the place where the MacBook Air was dominant. It's the most important part of the laptop ecosystem, I think. And they're just consistently playing a losing hand there. And if they're, they're thinking, we're just gonna lose here for a while until the ARM MacBook comes out. Man, there is a lot riding on that ARM MacBook, like a lot.

• 26:34Nilay Patel?

  And that's a, that's another year away, right?

• 26:37Speaker 01

  At, at best, it's a year away.

• 26:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I don't know, man, it just seems, they seem content with it. I mean, they're gonna keep selling iPhones and iPads and they're gonna make money hand over. I mean, if you think that's the future, then why even play the, the medium hand? Why, why have to support, you know, a generation of consumers who bought this product that you were never really that invested in? When you can just sell them a MacBook Air with a USB A port and they won't complain about dongles. That's true. Oh, they told us, uh, we, I asked about the USB C ecosystem.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 27:07Nilay Patel?

  And they're like, it's simple, which is amazing.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  No.

• 27:11Nilay Patel?

  They were like, there's three cables you need to understand, just three. They all have the same connector. There is your charge cable that comes with your MacBook that just charges it. There is USB C and there's Thunderbolt. And in there, this is very serious, and it's, you know, it's like a Venn diagram. So the power cable, the power cable is just a power cable. The USB cable is a USB cable and a power cable. And the Thunderbolt cable is a Thunderbolt cable and a USB C cable and a power cable. And they were like, just buy the Thunderbolt, if you're worried about, just buy the Thunderbolt cables.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  That's like, more like nesting dolls than Venn.

• 27:50Nilay Patel?

  I don't, I don't know how Venn diagrams work.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Typically, Venn diagrams are two circles overlapping.

• 27:54Nilay Patel?

  They're supersets.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  Supersets, nice.

• 27:56Nilay Patel?

  Nailed it. Uh, but they were like, yeah, if you're worried about it, just buy the Thunder, so just buy the most expensive cable and you'll be set.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  Right, right. Um. And then how do you plug in your iPhone?

• 28:05Nilay Patel?

  Every one of these, every one of the MacBook Pros they showed doing demos was dongle city.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:11Nilay Patel?

  Yep, every single, and like, part of it's a little unfair because they're all plugged into. TVs.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  TVs.

• 28:17Nilay Patel?

  HDMI outs. But every other thing was a donkled too. Except for the one guy who's like, I love this. I love, I love just having one kind of port and I just plug everything in and I understand. So that guy was good.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:27Nilay Patel?

  He was happy. All right. Dieter, is there any last things to say? Do we know how much these things cost yet?

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can spend anywhere from, I think, eighteen hundred bucks for the thirteen to sixty seven hundred bucks for a maxed out fifteen inch.

• 28:39Speaker 02

  Just to clarify though, dude, are you saying that Apple should wait a year for an ARM MacBook Air? Or are you saying that Apple is going to wait? Are you making a prediction or a suggestion?

• 28:53Speaker 01

  I am saying that Apple should update the little MacBook with the best Intel processors it can find ASAP. It should cut the price and make it the default MacBook Air replacement if it believes that those processors are good enough. If it doesn't, it should just put a retina screen on the MacBook Air and put new processes in it and call it a day. And just let it be weird for another couple of years. I would be very surprised if, if they released an ARM MacBook next year. That to me feels way too early. Like, I don't, like, it'll, they'll have a weird software platform issue if they do it that way. I think they'd rather have a weird hardware issue of which, which Mac should I get?

• 29:38Speaker 01

  There's not a great, like, middle of the road Mac to buy than have a weird platform issue. So my hunch is that the ARM MacBook is actually two years away.

• 29:48Nilay Patel?

  I, so my argument for one year away is they show the pros all this love now.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:55Nilay Patel?

  They, everybody who's gonna use Photoshop buys a new computer because they've been, you know, blanketed with affection. And then next year when the ARM Mac comes out and a bunch of things don't work anymore, it doesn't matter because you already just bought a new. Because love, love found a way.

• 30:13Nilay Patel?

  Right? And the only people who are buying that thing are the students and like, they'll get Microsoft to port Word for iOS to it and it'll be fine.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, every day it gets easier to port things to ARM and software that's written expressly for the Mac is typically written in Swift or Objective C with X codes. It's already going to run well on ARM. So it's basically the C++ software you have to worry about. And a lot of that is already getting ported to ARM or compilers target ARM. I feel like it's, it's not as absurd of an idea as it was once upon a time. I don't think they'll have to, I don't think Apple will have to do as many engineering jumps as Microsoft had to do to get Windows on ARM.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  But what that's going to mean, if they do it next year, just last point, if they do it next year and, and Nilay, your, your point is correct and Paul, I think your point is correct. The, the thing that doesn't fit in that works well in ARM framework is some of the, the heavier duty stuff like Adobe, everything Adobe makes. You know, the, like Unity, like there's a bunch of like pro stuff that will not work well on an ARM laptop unless they wait a little bit longer. And so that's going to mean that there's going to be a much sharper, brighter dividing line between the regular Macs and the pro Macs. And is that the world that Apple, like if they, the longer they wait, the fuzzier that line gets and the, the better off the platform will seem.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  But if, if there's a bright, sharp line between what works, you know, even a little on a regular Mac versus a pro Mac, that to me seems like not great.

• 31:43Nilay Patel?

  I think that this all comes down to, does the A12X or whatever emulate a Core M fast enough? Because that's how they got through it in the past. And knowing what I know about the Core M, the answer is yes.

• 32:00Nilay Patel?

  Like you can buy a baby MacBook with like an M3 in it and that thing is not fast. If they can just get to there, you're probably fine. All right, I'm going to read this ad and then Liz is going to do this week in Elon. Then we're going to, then we talk about that Surface Go.

• 32:15Nilay Patel?

  This episode of The Verge has brought to you by TransferWise. If you're going to need to send money internationally, TransferWise wants to warn you against using your bank or PayPal. Sure, they get your money from A to B, but that transfer costs you more than it should, a lot more. It's the old way. This is the new, smarter and cheaper way to spend money internationally. It's called TransferWise. TransferWise was founded by two friends, Tavet and Cristo, who were frustrated by the bank's bad exchange rates and high fees. They wondered, what if we could bypass the banks entirely? So they built TransferWise. That was seven years ago. Today, more than 2 million people use TransferWise. People sending money home, businesses paying suppliers, freelancers getting paid, the list goes on and on. TransferWise's clever new technology gives you a great exchange rate and a low fee, so it'll put some extra money in your pocket for the more important things, because no one has ever said, "It is important that my bank gets extra money." Except for the CEO of banks.

• 32:59Nilay Patel?

  Test it out for free at transferwise.com/podcast or download the app. Once again, that is transferwise.com/podcast. It is the wise way to send money.

• 33:11Speaker 03

  Hey, this is Liz Lopato, the science editor at The Verge, and welcome to This Week in Elon. So, as you almost certainly know already, there were some boys who were trapped in a Thai cave soccer team, been sort of a fixture in the media. And last week, near the end of the week, Elon Musk said that SpaceX was building a kids' side submarine to help rescue the trapped team. So they were using a long metal tube that might be, let's say, a refashioned part of a Falcon 9 rocket, which is a kind of recycling that I would not have expected from rockets, to be honest. But essentially, what they had done is they had converted this part of a rocket into an escape capsule. The idea was that the device would be small,

• 33:56Speaker 03

  and it would have oxygen in it, and the kid could lie down inside and then be taken out by divers. So he flew over to Thailand with this capsule. But according to reports from The Guardian and ABC, Musk was politely told that it was not necessarily going to be of use. The actual quote was, "Although this technology is good and sophisticated, it's not practical for the mission," according to the command center who was overseeing the rescue. But Elon Musk has responded to this, of course, on Twitter, to say that it was meant as a backup option, and he was just glad that the boys got out. And he has left the device there in case it is ever useful in the future. So that is the submarine, but that is not all. Somebody tweeted at Elon, "Hey, what about Flint? You know, there hasn't been clean water there for a very long time. What are you going to do something about that?"

• 34:40Speaker 03

  And then Elon Musk tweeted back. And so he has essentially pledged to try to help make sure that homes in the Flint area have clean water. What he said was literally, "Please consider this a commitment that I will fund fixing the water in any house in Flint that has water contamination." No kidding. And that was Wednesday. So now the Flint's mayor is tweeting at him to talk about, you know, what the problems are there and saying she'd like to get in touch. But that is an ongoing story and one that I expect we will be following. But that's, of course, because this is Elon Musk, not all. So there's been a bunch going on with Tesla lately. Let's go in chronological order. There's a trade war happening. Donald Trump has put a bunch of tariffs on Chinese goods. China has retaliated. And so that trade war has made Teslas much more expensive in China.

• 35:25Speaker 03

  If you are trying to purchase a Tesla in China, the cars are going to go up. The cars are going to be more expensive. But an interesting thing is that Elon Musk has just signed a memorandum of understanding to build cars in China, essentially. It's a quote unquote cooperative agreement with the Shanghai municipal government to build the third Gigafactory, the first in China. And they aim to be able to make 500,000 cars per year there in what is the biggest market for electric vehicles in the world. Now, what's interesting about that, and the reason why I bring the trade war thing up, is because this allows Tesla to potentially get around the tariffs. Because those cars are being produced in China, they're also being sold in China, there is no tariff on the cars.

• 36:10Speaker 03

  So that might bring the price back down. But this is sort of a long-term plan. I think they aren't planning to build the Gigafactory this year, and I don't think they're planning to build it next year either. But this is potentially one way, should the tariffs stay in place, to get around them. And of course, that's not all. Tesla is also, it was announced today, they have delivered its 200,000th car in the US. And what you may or may not know about Tesla is that there is a tax credit for electric vehicles that you receive until you get to the 200,000th car, and then it begins to tail off. So if you are thinking about buying a Tesla in the US and you want to receive the full $7,500 federal tax credit for an electric car, You should do this sooner rather than later because that is going to be phased

• 36:54Speaker 03

  out. Between now and December 31st, 2018, you can still get that tax credit. But after that, if you get delivery of your car between January 1st and June 30th in 2019, you only get a $3,750 credit. And then July 1st through December 31st, 2019, it's $1,875. And then after that, the incentive is dead.

• 37:17Speaker 03

  I think that pretty much wraps up this week in Elon, although it's been so eventful, it's possible that I'm forgetting stuff, which means that if you really want to know what's going on with Elon Musk, you should go to the website, theverge.com, and check us out because all the news is there.

• 37:30Nilay Patel?

  Elon, man.

• 37:32Speaker 02

  Just a lot.

• 37:33Nilay Patel?

  Just a lot.

• 37:33Speaker 02

  He's a busy guy.

• 37:35Nilay Patel?

  When does he find time to tweet?

• 37:38Nilay Patel?

  I love it. I can't get enough of it. Although I will say that the Flint thing, the mayor of Flint, Michigan tweeting at Elon, like, "Please call me so I can tell you what we need."

• 37:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:50Nilay Patel?

  That was a real turn today. I hope he fixes it.

• 37:53Speaker 02

  I really enjoyed the submarine thing because I was just like browsing Twitter, kind of like brain dead, and I just clicked on a video, just like watching people take a tube out of a pool.

• 38:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:04Speaker 02

  With no context. And so I had no idea what was inside the tube. So I thought there was a guy in the tube. I was like, yes.

• 38:14Nilay Patel?

  Oh, Elon. I think this week in Elon is going to be a fixture on our show. It's hard to, it's hard to do anything else. Anyway, Dieter, Surface Go.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. So Surface Go, this is maybe one of the most divisive gadgets amongst a bunch of Verge staff to come out in a little while. So it's a 10-inch Surface. It's got, I don't know, Intel Gold processors. I don't really know what the deal is with gold.

• 38:36Nilay Patel?

  Pentium Gold.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  Pentium Gold.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  It's a cable link. It's, it's, it's an Apple-esque choice as far as Intel processor age. Let's just say that.

• 38:48Nilay Patel?

  What I will say is that Pentium Gold, 100% sounds like a retirement community for Intel executives.

• 38:57Nilay Patel?

  That's all that is. Where do you live? I live in Pentium Gold.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  Pentium Gold.

• 39:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  It's like, it's like their, it's their rewards program internally for reporting bugs.

• 39:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  Anyway.

• 39:09Speaker 02

  Or if you buy 1,000 chips from Intel.

• 39:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 39:13Speaker 02

  They allow you to retire at Pentium Gold.

• 39:17Speaker 02

  Anyway.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  But the base model has, you know, whatever the processor is, 4 gigs of RAM, 64 gigs of storage, 399, but you gotta pay another 100 bucks for a type cover, or 130 if you want to get the cool Alcantara type cover. And if you want the stylus, that's another 100 bucks. So you, once you start specking this thing up, it very quickly gets to be, you know, 650, 700 dollars, at which point you're like, why don't you get a Pro? Get the bigger one. And so like, to me, this thing is fascinating because I'm obsessed with like trying to make low-power computers into like, the main computer for a lot of people. Can the iPad do it? I think Windows is more interesting in some ways because it does let you do the full

• 39:59Speaker 01

  stuff. So I am very fascinated by this. But a lot of other people are like, yeah, no, Windows on 4 gigs of RAM? No, thank you. This is a failure. This is a Surface RT all over again. And I honestly, like, I don't know how to decide what to think about this thing until I start using it.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  This is Windows S as well, right?

• 40:18Speaker 01

  Yes. It ships with Windows S.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  And you could upgrade it if you want to. So that

• 40:24Speaker 01

  You click the button.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  That might mitigate the RAM problem, but it still sounds, it sounds pretty dicey. When I saw the photos of this, I was like, oh, Microsoft's shipping their ARM Windows computer.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  Why isn't this ARM? I have no idea.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  Because they're not ready for it.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  And it also seems kind of expensive for the parts that are in it.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I think what you're getting is, you know, the beautiful engineering and the Surface brand and the blah, blah, blah.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  It's not just parts. I mean, if you, if you want this form factor, you can just like go buy an Acer, right? I mean, there, Microsoft's whole thing with Surface is like pushing that market forward. So if you're just looking at a spec sheet and you're trying to maximize value for dollar, like, there's a whole ecosystem of vendors that will do that for you.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  It's, it's just tough for me because as someone who, I really enjoy the 10-inch iPad with Folding keyboard form factor.

• 41:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 41:19Speaker 02

  And so, and I felt like my iPad Pro was pretty expensive. I bought like a refurbished one so I could get more storage for less money. But it felt pretty pricey to me and I haven't even bought the keyboard cover because I'm borrowing the Virg's keyboard cover. Because it's $130. But Microsoft is not that, I don't know. I feel like they could, they could really like dagger in the heart of Apple. Like, see, Apple, you don't have to charge this much money for this form factor, but maybe, maybe you gotta.

• 41:52Nilay Patel?

  But I think, again, that's where your, your Dells come into play, right? If you don't have to do that work and you just sit at the premium, like you can charge the premium.

• 42:02Speaker 02

  But don't, I mean, man, I really, I'm, I'm sorry to anybody who doesn't like excess Apple talk, but I feel like the Apple $1,000 win with the MacBook Air was that they were, it was premium at a competitive price.

• 42:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:18Speaker 02

  Like, there was a moment when that was a good deal.

• 42:21Nilay Patel?

  So here's my question for you. Man, I wish Joanna was here.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  There's a, because there's a scale.

• 42:24Nilay Patel?

  Is this just a netbook? Is this just the world's fanciest, it's $400, which was the classic netbook price, that size screen.

• 42:32Speaker 02

  I've always felt like a true.

• 42:32Speaker 02

  Not enough RAM. True, AMCC.

• 42:35Nilay Patel?

  What was the name of the processor that was in every netbook?

• 42:38Speaker 02

  Atom?

• 42:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it was the Atom 230, was in like every netbook. I used to have a macro to just lay out netbook specs. I'd be like, a new netbook has arrived. And I'd be, I would literally write netbook specs and hit return and it would lay it all out.

• 42:54Speaker 02

  My, my netbook moment was, I was live blogging on the E3 and I had to do live blogs back to back. And that was before you could really get like an external battery for your MacBook. And I wasn't gonna have time to charge. I didn't have two MacBooks.

• 43:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 43:09Speaker 02

  So I went to a Radio Shack and bought a horrible netbook to, to do like live blog number two.

• 43:18Nilay Patel?

  I used to know them all by heart. I used to know the EPC range by heart. This is the worst.

• 43:22Speaker 02

  See, that's the thing, the true netbook runs Linux. That's, in my heart, the netbook was a-

• 43:27Nilay Patel?

  That's the wrongest thing you've ever said.

• 43:29Speaker 02

  It was a moment, there was a moment there where we were like, oh.

• 43:33Nilay Patel?

  No, that was the first EPC had a weird Linux build on it.

• 43:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:37Nilay Patel?

  And they're like, wait, what operating system people want to use on here?

• 43:41Speaker 02

  Because Microsoft had to bow down. Microsoft, Microsoft got freaked out by the success of that little Linux, little Linux buddy.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:52Nilay Patel?

  Man, we used to cover Netbook a lot. Anyway, so here's my question.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  Is it a Netbook, or is it a Chromebook competitor, or is it an iPad competitor? Or is it none of the above?

• 44:01Speaker 02

  iPad Pro competitor.

• 44:03Nilay Patel?

  Yes, with a much slower processor.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 44:07Nilay Patel?

  But.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  I don't know. I think, I think they, they want to, this is their play to like, get in schools. Like, they know most of the schools are just gonna buy the Dell or the Acer whatever, but they want to use this as a halo product for schools, um, to take on Chromebooks. Like, to just show that you can, you can get all the Windows stuff, uh, and there is a price point that is, like, available to you as a school.

• 44:28Nilay Patel?

  I think the thing that makes it the iPad competitor is actually hilariously Windows S, right? The, the reason that Windows tablets is conceived of as iPad competitors have never really gone anywhere. They've, they're like, two-in-ones that can kind of be a tablet. Is because Windows itself has historically not been great at being a tablet operating system. And S is that it provides that set of limitations around the interface in a way that is much more structured. Like, you can't accidentally open a full-on Windows desktop app if you have an S app, like a store app. I don't know. Like, that's, that to me is the thing. Like, they want to, they want to restrict this experience and then give you the, you can walk through the door to the other experience if you want it.

• 45:10Nilay Patel?

  But to me, this is, you see what people are doing with iPads. Everybody, like, everybody who has an iPad with a keyboard is like, this, if only it could do the one more thing, and this can obviously do that.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:23Nilay Patel?

  But it's still Windows, so you've got to constrain the experience so it's a little bit friendlier.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:28Nilay Patel?

  Is that, I mean, I know my brother-in-law bought one instantly. He was like, "I've been waiting for this," and instantly bought one.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  It's, it's just a great four-pack.

• 45:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  I kind of regret buying the Surface Pro 4, honestly, uh, because I don't use it quite enough to, uh, to justify having that full machine, and having, having this thing be smaller is actually pretty tempting.

• 45:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Alright, so here's the other thing we gotta talk about.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:52Nilay Patel?

  Magic Leap.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 45:54Speaker 02

  This summer, which I have learned technically in late September?

• 45:59Nilay Patel?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, they got time.

• 46:01Speaker 02

  They got time.

• 46:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. They're shipping and they've been doing live streams. I don't know if anybody's been paying attention to this. They've just been like casually live streaming Magic Leap demos.

• 46:10Speaker 02

  Okay, so I watched, I skimmed around because I was looking for it because they showed some clips of like captured from hardware of like tech demos that looked frankly awful. It looked real cheap. Like, like they looked like you were running iPhone 3G graphics, you know? But obviously, you know, everybody that's worn it has been like kind of blown away by like the sense of presence. So I'm sure it's better when you're wearing it than like looking at it from a Twitch stream. But it does seem like, you know, this is like, it's like a creator's edition, right? That they're releasing? So it's kind, I mean, because Oculus Rift released a developer version and it was really interesting watching the stream because it was clear they

• 46:54Speaker 02

  were talking to people who want to develop for this hardware but have literally no idea what this hardware is because Magic Leap is so weirdly secretive. I found a blog post trying to, so Magic Leap released a demo Unity scene so that you could in VR pretend like you were wearing Magic Leap so that you can develop your game for Magic Leap. And they had a simulated field of view and someone's doing all this crazy math to try to determine what Magic Leap's actual field of view is. And they still really couldn't come up with like a, like a definitive answer.

• 47:33Nilay Patel?

  So I think based on the demos I've seen, which are honestly like Twitter video clips of long Twitch streams, but like Magic Leap is tweeting them, they're on their own clips. What they're showing developers right now is how to get objects in the AR scene to interact with reality. And so the demos are like low polygon count, like they're crappy and it's like a little monster that like throws a rock and it like hits the wall behind you and explodes. And all they're trying to get out is you can do this. Like here's how this works. Like here's how to think about it. What they are not showing off is like high-end graphics rendering. What they're not showing off is, what they cannot show off is how this actually looks in their light field display. And I think there was a dig headline, I think John Gruber picked it up.

• 48:17Nilay Patel?

  The dig headline I think is really unfair, which is like, we've now seen Magic Leap and it's incredibly disappointing. And like, I am a noted Magic Leap skeptic. Because they are incredible at getting just the wildest puff pieces.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:32Nilay Patel?

  Put out in the world. Like Pitchfork did one. Why? Like, what are you doing? And all these pieces never actually say what it is or how it works. Like, I'm noted skeptic, although I've heard from some smart people who've warned it that it's real. But they're not yet revealing anything beyond, if you're a developer, here's how to begin to build applications inside of this mapping system.

• 48:53Speaker 02

  And what I'm saying is, it looks like this product, I'm, obviously, consumers are gonna buy this product because they're releasing it widely, but it's gonna, this is, it seems, I mean, they're naming it in such a way that you would assume it's intended for developers.

• 49:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 49:06Speaker 02

  To build for the, the real consumer Magic Leap. Which is dangerous, because that implies that the real consumer Magic Leap will be somehow significantly better, as Oculus was significantly better between the developer version and the real version.

• 49:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. At the end of the day, though, is, like, what Oculus is doing now, is it that much of a leap of, over what the developer version could do?

• 49:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:31Nilay Patel?

  You think so?

• 49:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. The, the original, what was it? The, yeah. The, the developer, I forget all the names, it's like DK1 or whatever, DK2. Those were much lower resolution.

• 49:43Nilay Patel?

  That's true.

• 49:44Speaker 02

  Way less ergonomic, not nearly as good tracking, because they like, they added, they like changed up the way their sensors work. They changed so much before they released the actual.

• 49:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I'm just thinking in terms of step change. Like, you could, if you wore, I think we had DK3 in our office for a while.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 50:02Nilay Patel?

  And if you wore that, and then you wore the final one, you're like, this has been refined.

• 50:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 50:07Nilay Patel?

  You weren't like, this is a radically new experience. And I think that's always the, the challenge with these public developer things.

• 50:13Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 50:14Nilay Patel?

  Where like, you can, you can put it on, you can see the endpoint, but you have to be very charitable about whether they're gonna get to the endpoint.

• 50:20Speaker 02

  Hmm. Yeah.

• 50:21Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. We'll, we'll see. I just, it's weird, like, it's weird for me to read these, like, very negative headlines about Magic Leap, and me, noted skeptic, being like, wait, you're... You're actually being too skeptical. Like, they're just showing, they're just showing this like, basic thing that developers can do inside of their system. And what you absolutely cannot show is whether this light field technology works.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  So first of all, you talk about Oculus, disclosure, my wife works for Oculus. To me, the big question isn't necess- it's, it's, how big is the light, the field of view? All that. It's also, what is this software platform? Will they actually get enough support for it? Because I don't know of any software platforms not named Mac, Windows, or iOS that are doing super hot in terms of consumer adoption. And develop, and getting developers to make consumer apps. I guess you could put Oculus and Vive on that list now, too. But then, the, I don't know, the most hilarious thing to me is this AT&T partnership. Like, AT&T is like, they're gonna sell them when they're, when they're ready for consumers, and they're gonna exclusively provide the wireless service for them.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  But, like, it's very clear, looking at the, the PR for it, that the entire deal with AT&T doing this, and making an investment in Magic Leap, and blah, blah, blah, blah, is simply so that they can be the exclusive wireless carrier to have these things in their stores, so that they can get customers to come into an AT&T store, so they can look at cool stuff in AR.

• 51:44Nilay Patel?

  It's like a Santa Claus.

• 51:45Speaker 01

  And then buy an LG V30.

• 51:47Nilay Patel?

  That's exactly right.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  Sorry, I just randomly picked, I don't know, I picked that phone.

• 51:55Nilay Patel?

  Scoop, scoop.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  So by the way, breaking news, while we've been podcasting.

• 51:59Nilay Patel?

  I've been waiting for you to say this.

• 52:00Speaker 01

  Department of Justice filed to appeal the AT&T Tim Warner merger.

• 52:03Nilay Patel?

  Oh, give it a break.

• 52:06Speaker 01

  Hey, it's incredible. What are you, come on?

• 52:10Nilay Patel?

  I don't say you give it a break, I'm saying bloggers.

• 52:14Speaker 01

  They can't stop it. They're like, we got these laws, we should try them out. I mean, the Trump administration is like, everything's cool, any merger can go through, except this one, because the president hates CNN. Like, that's what's happening here, and it's wild, because the remedy now, for a deal that has closed, is that they would have to separate.

• 52:35Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 52:37Speaker 01

  Right, that, like, they let it, they didn't file in time to block it.

• 52:41Nilay Patel?

  From happening, it happened. No one heard a word about it. And now they're, if they win on appeal, they have to undo the merger.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  You think that what happened was they were like, you know what? We lost. It's fine. We're just gonna walk away from this. And then they, they, we, we could, we actually talked about this. They, they heard, they read the stories about the, the leaked meeting with, between HBO. And AT&T executive where the HBO exec was like, we gotta make some more stuff.

• 53:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the head of the DOJ is like a Game of Thrones fan. He's like, I don't like this plan at all. I don't know, man. He's trying to protect Khaleesi.

• 53:21Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it's wild. I don't know what their theory of the appeal is. We're gonna have to read the filing, but it's happening. But I will say this, when we talk about AT&T, it just occurred to me the other day, and this is, came out of the, the head of Warner Media, which is what Time Warner has been renamed to inside of AT&T, which they would have to undo. Well, there's no more Time. There's no more time, because Time Inc. is a separate company that is now owned by another magazine company. So Time is gone, Warner's, it's all gone. Except for the DOJ might bring it back. Anyway, and the reason they changed it was they didn't want the association with Time Warner Cable. Yeah, who would?

• 53:56Nilay Patel?

  Time Warner Cable has been renamed Spectrum. Like, this whole thing is gone. It's just a memory hold. But even at this meeting that the head of Warner Media had with HBO executives, which was reported all in the world. So first, the New York Times ran a big piece, and they were like, they had some quotes, and the quotes are crazy. He's like, we need to make more profits. The next year of your life will be like childbirth. It'll be really painful. And he's like, my wife hates it when I say this. All this is insane. It's like, you should listen to this person who actually had the children. She lived it. And he's like, what I say to her is, but we love our kids. Like, all this is horrible. Like, this is all true. This is all true. Are the kids Westworld and Game of Thrones?

• 54:40Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, so the time runs out, people freak out. Peter Kafka at Recode gets the whole audio, runs long transcripts. It's obviously, the tone of it is a little different, you know, when you have the long transcripts. But there's this piece in the middle where he describes what can only be thought of as a supervillain plan, which is, "We're investing in our 5G network, which will then enable autonomous cars, because they'll be able to talk to each other. And when you're in your autonomous car, you're gonna have extra time. And during that time, you should be watching our streaming service, which is also enabled by 5G." And now, it's like, and you're wearing your AR headset.

• 55:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:21Nilay Patel?

  And it's like, this is just a wild supervillain plan. And at the end of it, you go to your job at AT&T, because we've bought every company in the world. It's crazy.

• 55:32Speaker 02

  I like someone who thinks of autonomous cars as ad inventory.

• 55:37Speaker 01

  Well, that was, that was the Echo's big thing back in the day.

• 55:41Nilay Patel?

  And like, it turns out, run by supervillains.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  To me, the biggest thing, the biggest thing out of that meeting wasn't the, you know, the confusion about, like, are they gonna try and turn HBO into Netflix? Like, I don't think so. It seemed like it at first, but it seems like they, what AT&T cares about is they need to own hours a day, but they don't need HBO to be the only thing that gets them hours a day. But the other reason they want HBO is so they can collect more data. And the phrase is that, that allows us to create, quote, "alternative models of advertising", unquote.

• 56:16Nilay Patel?

  I don't know what that means. It means they're gonna, they're gonna show you ads for the LGV30 inside your magically headset while you drive around your AT&T car. All of it's terrifying. I cannot wait to read this appeal. We'll have full coverage of it. I'm gonna read an ad, and then we're gonna have the Paul segment, and then we should have a bunch of other stuff.

• 56:37Nilay Patel?

  This is from our friends at Techmeme. We love Techmeme. By the way, The Verge, almost since its inception, number two site on Techmeme. So, of course. Anyway, Techmeme has a new podcast called The Techmeme Ride Home. It's like NPR's Marketplace but for tech news. Just look in your podcast app for The Techmeme Ride Home. Please subscribe to it. Techmeme.com is great for visiting several times a day to find out what you missed in the world of tech. They're just taking what Techmeme is and distilling it in podcast form. Same news, headlines, context about what happened today in the world of tech. It's a daily show, Monday through Friday, posted around 5:00 PM Eastern every afternoon. It's only 20 minutes long. It's just the top stories in the world of tech, top posts about those stories, top tweets and conversations. The host is Brian McCullough, who also hosts the Internet History Podcast. Internet History Podcast's been running for four years now. Techmeme Ride Home is his new show from our friends at Techmeme. Go check it out in

• 57:22Nilay Patel?

  your podcast app. All right, Paul.

• 57:25Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 57:26Nilay Patel?

  This is a big one, man.

• 57:27Speaker 02

  I know.

• 57:28Nilay Patel?

  You do this segment every week, but this week, what's true?

• 57:31Speaker 02

  Here's the thing. Every week, I do a segment with the same name.

• 57:36Nilay Patel?

  What's your segment called?

• 57:37Speaker 02

  It's called The Hearings. And Hearings is spelled like the plural of hearing, but with two Rs. This week's very special because this segment of Hearings, on The Verge Cast, that I do every week, and it's always called the same thing, is brought to you by Darn Tough Vermont Socks, a vertically integrated merger of premium merino and your feet. Made in the USA and unconditionally guaranteed for life. Use promo code VERGE at checkout for 20% off your first order at darnough.com. And look, I can't tell anybody what to do,

• 58:19Speaker 02

  but you, you should really buy some socks. So, Hearings. Hearings is the earbuds Yeah. that are earrings.

• 58:29Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 58:30Speaker 02

  Right? They're called Swings Bluetooth earrings.

• 58:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 58:34Speaker 02

  It's a Kickstarter, obviously.

• 58:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, of course.

• 58:37Speaker 02

  And I want to love it, but I can't because it looks so completely impractical because they, they don't, they're not just like hanging from the earrings and you take them out and you put them in your Ear, you like swivel it up, but it stays connected to your ear. Which seems like, it's just like if it would pull on your earlobes if you have the wrong sized earlobes. I don't know. Also, these look impractically small for like the battery life that they're promising. Also, it's like, like any of like these true wireless, they have to, they have like a charging case. So you ain't gotta take them out of your ears to charge. I don't know. I, I love it in principle, but uh, I'd say a swings and a miss. Wow.

• 59:19Speaker 01

  As earrings, they don't look great.

• 59:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I'm not an expert.

• 59:23Nilay Patel?

  I'm just gonna say this, our wonderful intern, McKenna Kelly, wrote this post. She is, yeah, she's great. She's super.

• 59:30Speaker 02

  She's into it. And that's why I, I feel extra bad for, for, and to be honest, the great thing is, is that I don't have pierced ears. I don't have to make this decision.

• 59:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I'm just saying McKenna, who was in it.

• 59:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:43Nilay Patel?

  She's like, I'm ready for hearings.

• 59:45Speaker 02

  Just feeling it. Wow.

• 59:46Nilay Patel?

  So.

• 59:47Speaker 02

  Hearing's alright.

• 59:48Nilay Patel?

  Turn next task as an intern is clipping Bluetooth headphones.

• 59:51Speaker 02

  Reiterate, it's hearing plural, two Rs.

• 59:55Nilay Patel?

  What's sponsored by?

• 59:56Speaker 02

  Darn Tough socks.

• 59:57Nilay Patel?

  Alright, we're gonna, we're gonna work on the ad execution over time.

• 1:00:00Speaker 02

  Darn Tough Vermont socks.

• 1:00:02Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna get better at this.

• 1:00:02Speaker 02

  Marino wool.

• 1:00:03Nilay Patel?

  Stop it.

• 1:00:05Speaker 02

  I bet your feet are so sweaty right now, but they won't have to be.

• 1:00:08Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I know I asked the advertisers to sponsor the segment, but now I feel bad. We got a few, a few more weeks of this coming. If you're interested.

• 1:00:17Speaker 02

  Darntough.com.

• 1:00:19Nilay Patel?

  Stop it. You've given them enough.

• 1:00:23Nilay Patel?

  Alright, a couple of things in the grab bag here. YouTube TV went down during the World Cup.

• 1:00:28Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:00:29Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I watched a bunch of YouTube TV. Um, it is by far, I think, the best streaming TV cord cutting service out there. Like it's just well made, but going down during the World Cup is not a good look. Also, I don't think it looks very good and it only streams in stereo. So it's just a lot. I don't think there's a streaming TV service that handles. The full range yet.

• 1:00:52Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:00:53Nilay Patel?

  Of like the

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:53Nilay Patel?

  It does surround.

• 1:00:55Speaker 02

  I had the highs and the lows with YouTube TV during the World Cup during the Croatia game. Um, because I was, I, I, it was down. I was like, ah, whatever. I'll deal with it later. And then it came back up and then I was a full minute, minute and a half ahead of the people that were watching. And I think on Fox Sports. And so I was sitting at my desk and all of a sudden I like jumped back from my desk and threw my hands in the air. Ah, and everyone turned and looked and I was like, nothing. Just like quietly sat back down and then they all like turned and stared at their screens and then saw the goal. It was amazing.

• 1:01:28Nilay Patel?

  Oh, we have a lot of Brits on the Verge staff.

• 1:01:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:31Nilay Patel?

  So we're, we're a little quiet overnight.

• 1:01:34Speaker 02

  Maybe too many Brits.

• 1:01:36Nilay Patel?

  We have one, we have one person from Croatia. He's very happy.

• 1:01:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:38Nilay Patel?

  He's very happy. Yeah, I, I just not sold on the streaming TV bundle thing.

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  I tried YouTube TV for the Olympics and I just got tired of like trying to like tell it that I want to record all of the Olympics. So it's like, well, this is not working as a DVR and then for like, for live sports, it's really easy to type in. In literally any sport. So name a sport that you know about.

• 1:02:03Nilay Patel?

  Football.

• 1:02:04Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:02:04Nilay Patel?

  Whichever version of football that you care for.

• 1:02:06Speaker 02

  Okay. Well, let's say the NFL, you type in NFL streams Reddit.

• 1:02:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:12Speaker 02

  And just see what happens.

• 1:02:14Nilay Patel?

  I know.

• 1:02:14Speaker 02

  Although right now, the, the, cause it, there's a, a, a streaming protocol that's kind of like torrenting. So it's a peer to peer protocol. So it doesn't go down during the big game. Uh, just puts a lot of burden on Comcast's infrastructure. It, uh, it worked beautifully for me, uh, but also there's a warning that says like Soda Player, which is like the popular app to play this on Windows. That's like a virus right now.

• 1:02:41Speaker 02

  So I feel like it all balances out.

• 1:02:43Nilay Patel?

  All right. Next in the grab bag. Xbox One getting Dolby Vision support. Now there are three things that light up all the lights. The Apple TV in the future, Atmos and Vision, Chromecast Ultra, the thing I've been using, Atmos and Vision, Xbox One. Got them both.

• 1:02:59Speaker 02

  Not the Nvidia, I thought Nvidia Shield hit all the lights.

• 1:03:01Nilay Patel?

  Nvidia Shield does HDR 10. They have promised a software update.

• 1:03:05Speaker 02

  So disappointed.

• 1:03:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but I'm, I'm buying Xbox One X.

• 1:03:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I can tell.

• 1:03:09Nilay Patel?

  It's happening.

• 1:03:10Speaker 02

  You're gonna go one X, you're not gonna go one S. One S is so cheap.

• 1:03:13Nilay Patel?

  No, but I want all the, I want all the 4Ks and the

• 1:03:16Speaker 02

  Fine.

• 1:03:17Nilay Patel?

  Non-interlaced, you know, the, the words that the gamer say. I want all of them. When the new Madden comes out, I'm definitely, I'm letting this PS4 Pro.

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, and also like winter's coming up and you're, you're gonna need something to heat your house.

• 1:03:30Nilay Patel?

  Yes. It's very efficient. One little piece of Apple news that makes me sad, they're ending their photo book operation. They're no longer printing photos for people. I only bring this up because Apple photo books used to be just like a default gift in my family. Cause they're great and they're like, well made and everything about photos, Apple like makes the world's most popular camera and their entire photo ecosystem is like out of control bad. It like, it makes me sad. I used to use iPhoto, I used to use iPhoto at events because it was so much faster than anything else.

• 1:04:00Speaker 02

  It's so weird. It was probably my number one tech support issue over the past like five, 10 years was my computer is full. I can't do anything anymore and obviously VRAM, right? And they can't get any virtual memory allocated because the hard drive's full. Obviously that's why nothing works. But it's because of their photo collection, but Apple never made a way to keep on having a photo collection. But it not be on your hard drive and it be like seamless.

• 1:04:28Nilay Patel?

  They do it now. The photos do it now, but it's

• 1:04:32Speaker 02

  You gotta really trust that iCloud. There, there should, five years ago, I should have been able to buy a hard drive at Best Buy, plug it in and say, this is my backup drive. Keep some thumbnails on my computer and store big old stuff that I don't look at on this.

• 1:04:47Nilay Patel?

  And now you can do that with the magic of iCloud. Your backup drive is somewhere in North Carolina. Solar powered data center powered by love. No, it's just, like, we, we have Max, who's a kid, right? And it is just remarkable to me. I care about photos now. It's, all these mobile phones are great, but like our little Sony RX 100. It just takes a better photo.

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:11Nilay Patel?

  And then I put it into a system, I put it into a computer. And I'm like, this Apple Photos thing is like not great. So now I have Lightroom. And now I'm just a pro photographer. And it's like, just a little bit of caring about how my photos work led me into this entirely pro workflow. And it's like, it doesn't have to be this way. But anyway.

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I need to spend a solid, I don't know, week to actually get good at Lightroom. As good at Lightroom as I used to be at Apple Photos. Apple Photos doesn't maintain when you switch from editing one photo to the next one. Doesn't remember that you want to maintain the aspect ratio when you crop. So you have to manually choose it every time. I've been asked them to fix it for three years, they haven't done it. And that is the thing that is kicking me off of Photos into Lightroom more than anything else.

• 1:05:55Nilay Patel?

  Um, Lightroom, CC, the sort of like cloud Lightroom. Coolest thing about it, this is so over the top. This is like, you have to be such a ridiculous gadget person. The coolest thing about it is you can use the Apple pencil to do edits on the iPad Pro. So like my photo, and I just like, like doing it. There's no reason for me to be doing this. So now my workflow is like, I take the photo, I pull the card out, I put it into a laptop. Upload everything to Lightroom, wait for it to go into the cloud, pull it down on my iPad and then color. It's, it's very satisfying, completely ridiculous. But like, Apple could have been there.

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:31Nilay Patel?

  And they just weren't.

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  I just gave up on taking photos. I didn't want to be the person that solved a photography workflow.

• 1:06:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the problem is, uh, the baby is, cannot be responsible for her own photography.

• 1:06:45Nilay Patel?

  No one will remember her.

• 1:06:48Nilay Patel?

  She's great, it's just, you suddenly like, oh, I gotta figure this out. I better figure this out right now.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:54Nilay Patel?

  She gets bigger every day. All right, Dieter, you have written here, "The web lives, I am telling you."

• 1:06:59Speaker 01

  The web is not dead yet, I'm telling you. Okay, uh, we shouldn't spend too much time on these, but, uh, there's this service called itty.biddy.sight, which I love. It takes an entire webpage and then encodes it directly into the URL. And then you send that URL to somebody and the webpage doesn't have to be hosted on a server. It can all just be rendered locally because everything on it is encoded. In the URL.

• 1:07:26Speaker 02

  It's amazing. This, uh, this reminds me-

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  It turns a webpage into like an attachment. What does it even mean to be a website if there's no site? It's just like a thing you send to somebody.

• 1:07:35Speaker 02

  Well, then you take that long URL and then you put it in like a tiny URL type of thing.

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:40Speaker 02

  Now it's not even like gigantic.

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:43Speaker 02

  It's pretty cool.

• 1:07:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know. I, that's it. Like, I just, I just think it's really clever and, and just, if you just sit and think about like going to a website and then realize that there's no website for this thing, it's just like a URL attachment thing. You end up like spinning in circles for a little while and it's a, it's a really enjoyable spin and I highly recommend it. Itty dot bitty dot site. And then the other one I wanted to talk about, uh, I just think it's like this amazing mashup of like cool new web technologies, sort of. So there's Glitch, which I don't know if we've talked about it too much, but it's a great little app platform. Neil Dash runs it. And somebody made a, a cool little glitch app that as you're driving, the map updates and reads you a Wikipedia article

• 1:08:29Speaker 01

  of something that you're near. And so that's cute, that's cool. I just think it's super funny that the tech lead for the Google AMP project made a cool little web app using Glitch. Like, they take those two giant trends in the web and then they just like happen to intersect this week.

• 1:08:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I really think there's something, I, I've been, I follow Neil Dash on, on Twitter and he's always tweeting fun little glitch things. And it is- We went and visited Glitch. Yeah, it's really inspiring.

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:57Speaker 02

  To see people like make, make things.

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:02Speaker 02

  Like, it just reminds me of what the, the web felt like growing up of like, it's full websites made by people.

• 1:09:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, Glitch is really cool. I mean, we, Paul and I, their office is next door to us. We just like went over and had lunch with them. It's so cool and they have this cool feature. This is why, it's like community building is really hard, especially at scale, and they think really hard about how to do it. And but they have this cool feature where if you're working on a project on Glitch and you need help, you just like push a button and it tells everyone else like, hey, I need some help.

• 1:09:29Speaker 02

  It's like a little hand raised emoji.

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  And then people come and help you.

• 1:09:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:33Speaker 01

  That's super cool. We should do something bigger with Glitch. Don't take that idea. If you're another tech website, tech me Ryan Hoben, I'd see you.

• 1:09:41Nilay Patel?

  All right, that's it. I want to tell you, just at the end here, you're a Vergecast listener, you like The Verge, we're running an audience survey right now. Just go to theverge.com/survey. We're just getting, it's been like two-ish years since our last big redesign. I'm not saying we're gonna redesign inside again, but that was the last time we did a bunch of user research. We're just doing it again.

• 1:10:00Speaker 02

  All felt this time. Skemorphic Verge.

• 1:10:05Speaker 01

  Oh, hey.

• 1:10:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 1:10:11Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, go take the survey. It's just for us. We're not sharing this data or something or anything like that. It's literally, we're trying to figure out where people get it. I looked at the results today. Eighty-six people didn't know we had a website. This is just a fact. They're like, where were you not aware of The Verge? And it's like, most people were not aware that like, some RSS feed publishes to LinkedIn. Some people didn't know we had an Instagram. Eighty-six people did not know we had a website.

• 1:10:35Speaker 02

  I feel ya.

• 1:10:36Nilay Patel?

  That's great.

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 1:10:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's wild. So anyway, theverge.com/survey, go take that. It's been, we'll, we'll, we'll share some high-level data when we're, when we get it wrapped up and all sort of that. Not in a public way, just like in an interesting factoid way. Again, the data is just for us. It's not for any various Russian actors. It's just for us to make The Verge better. We'd appreciate it. Also, Converge with Casey Newton is running right now. It, that show's amazing.

• 1:11:01Speaker 02

  Every episode's a gem.

• 1:11:03Nilay Patel?

  So good. You can also follow us on all the social, find us on Apple Podcasts, give us, give us those stars. You can also listen to Recode Decode with Kara Swisher, Recode Media with Peter Kafka. Wonderful shows. You can also tweet at us, I'mReckless, Paul's Future Paul, Theaters@Backlon.

• 1:11:18Speaker 01

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna, one more thing. Thank you to everybody who subscribed to our YouTube channel. We just hit, The Verge just hit two million subscribers. Verge Science is closing in at a hundred thousand subscribers, which is incredible for a brand-new channel. And just, we really appreciate everybody who smashed that sub button, fam. Thank you.

• 1:11:36Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 1:11:37Speaker 01

  Do it, if you haven't.

• 1:11:39Speaker 02

  Did I ring the bell?

• 1:11:40Nilay Patel?

  Ring the bell!

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  All right, that's it.

• 1:11:41Nilay Patel?

  Goodbye, rock and roll.

• 1:11:43Speaker 01

  Promo code.