Introducing Circuit Breaker, Google hardware, and the next Apple Watch

With Nilay out, Dieter brings in the editor of Circuit Breaker, Paul Miller, and news editor Jake Kastrenakes to discuss this week in tech. Racked senior reporter Nicola Fumo engages the hype matrix in this week's episode of Vergecast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:04Speaker 00

  Greetings, mobile accomplishers. Welcome to The Vergecast. We're recording this on April 28, 2016. And as you can tell from that stunningly professional introduction, I am not Neelai Patel. I am Dieter Bohn, and I am joined by...

• 0:18Speaker 01

  Not Dieter Bohn, I'm Paul Miller.

• 0:20Speaker 02

  I'm Jake Kastrenakes.

• 0:22Speaker 03

  I'm Nicola Flomo.

• 0:23Speaker 02

  Can I ask a question?

• 0:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 0:25Speaker 02

  What's a mobile accomplisher?

• 0:27Speaker 00

  I have to explain this like every 10 Vergecasts.

• 0:30Speaker 02

  I'm sorry I've missed it.

• 0:31Speaker 03

  That's how Dieter introduced his legacy podcast of a decade ago.

• 0:36Speaker 00

  That's correct. A mobile accomplisher, so whenever companies make gadgets, they come up with like cute demographic terms for the people that they think will buy them. And mobile accomplisher was the group that Palm CEO Ed Coligan thought was going to buy the Trio 680, which was the first Trio without an antenna and came in multiple colors.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  This is a very well-known fact, but you literally can't ask Dieter any question without Trio or Palm popping up in the answer.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  It's great. It's good.

• 1:08Speaker 00

  So, we had a big week. Paul works at The Verge now, officially. We like to call him Al Plumlier.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was a secret, secret. I had a pseudonym for the first time ever. It's Al Plumlier is how you pronounce it.

• 1:24Speaker 00

  Plumlier?

• 1:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, you have to really get into it.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  I mean, it's wonderful, because I feel like Neelai himself has been threatening to write under a pseudonym for years. And finally, he just made you do it.

• 1:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's how Atari does it. Neelai is at a conference in New Orleans. I assume that it also involves, I don't know, drinking and partying.

• 1:43Speaker 01

  You said drinking, because I'm gonna say drinking.

• 1:47Speaker 00

  But we're here, and we just launched this week Circuit Breaker, which is the world's best gadget blog. It's a gadget blog that comes to you from The Verge. It is available at theverge.com/circuitbreaker and also at facebook.com/circuitbreaker. Putting up videos, Facebook instant articles. We're talking about gadgets. Paul, tell us about Circuit Breaker.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  Circuit Breaker is a gadget blog, and it has just gadgets. I think that's the thing, is you go to verge.com/circuitbreaker, and you're gonna see gadgets. And I think if that's important to you, you know who you are. And I love, I love just pulling up that page like, that's a gadget, that's a gadget. That's, well, that's pretty much a gadget.

• 2:25Speaker 00

  Basically a gadget.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  I mean, we, we did something about, um, there's this, I'm excited about the story because this is the story my dad wanted to talk to me about the other night. Was this like machine learning thing that automatically classifies black and white images and then turns them into color images.

• 2:41Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Is that a gadget?

• 2:43Speaker 00

  Gadgety.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  Put it on Circuit Breaker.

• 2:46Speaker 00

  We actually had huge, massive knockdown, drag on arguments about whether or not apps could go on Circuit Breaker or not. And we, we came down with yes.

• 2:54Speaker 03

  Why?

• 2:54Speaker 00

  Because, because you, you run them on gadgets.

• 2:57Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 2:58Speaker 00

  Also because we're not monsters.

• 2:59Speaker 02

  That's the kind of thing that I want out of a gadget blog though, right? It's like, it's the gadgets and then what I can do with the gadgets I have.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  Right. That's what, I'm looking for software that makes it more of a gadget.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  You know, and I feel like a novel machine learning technique, it's like an advancement of the state of the art.

• 3:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  That's like when a new graphics card comes out. That's, that's, that's my, that's my excuse at least.

• 3:21Speaker 03

  My favorite part of Circuit Breaker is the reclaiming of the word blog.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:27Speaker 03

  Which became like kind of dirty for a little while because it meant unpolished. But now you're like, no, it's back.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  It's really freeing.

• 3:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  I'm experimenting with new, new prose styles.

• 3:37Speaker 00

  I'm experimenting with really old prose styles that I use over and over again. Like I, expect me to type the, the like, except comma, well, comma, like four times a day. That's all I do.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Except well.

• 3:49Speaker 00

  Well.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I know what you're talking about.

• 3:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  I like the argument that you had with yourself in the one story. Um, you just pasted a bunch of people's Slack arguments into a story.

• 3:59Speaker 00

  Oh, yes.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  Rewrote them into an argument, made yourself look brilliant.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  It really took our quotes out of context.

• 4:06Speaker 00

  No, but I, I mean, I admitted to it.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  That's the highlight of Circuit Breaker for me so far.

• 4:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, this was, this was an argument that we had about whether or not we should write about the fact that AT&T said that they were closing down its 2G network, the edge network, which they said three years ago that they were doing, or four years ago that they were doing.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  So what does, what does AT&T's 2G edge network mean to you?

• 4:26Speaker 03

  Um, it's commercials I've seen.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 4:29Speaker 03

  I think you get a lot of data. Is that, or is it the thing where you can trade in?

• 4:36Speaker 02

  Okay, I made the same mistake. I'm like, oh dang, AT&T is shutting down its trade-in program. No, that's AT&T. I think that's Next.

• 4:45Speaker 03

  I think Verizon is Edge.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  Oh, Verizon was right. That's it.

• 4:50Speaker 00

  Edge is the network that came before 3G. So the iPhone originally was on Edge and then the iPhone 3G was like, this is a big deal because now 3G. But Edge was-

• 5:04Speaker 03

  Oh, yes, I remember seeing that in the corner.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Why did they call it Edge and not 2G?

• 5:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:10Speaker 00

  Because like, because nobody-

• 5:11Speaker 02

  We weren't on the Gs yet.

• 5:14Speaker 00

  They may have, there may have been some people that call it 2Gs. By the time we got to 2.5G, well, by the time we got to 3G, AT&T was behind on its rollout of the HSPA network. And so they started saying, when the first iPhone was coming out, that, no, man, we're not just 2G, we're 2.5G because our Edge is really, really fast.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Did Edge sound like fast and exciting?

• 5:36Speaker 00

  Dude, it was.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  Okay. So I never got a chance to use Edge.

• 5:39Speaker 00

  In the US, it was, there was CDMA on Sprint and Verizon, and that was like legitimately faster than Edge. But all the cool phones from Europe were running on either Edge or later HSPA. And so I would get phones that you would have to use an AT&T or maybe Team, or at the time, Voice Stream. Because like that, that was a cool phone from Europe and I couldn't get the stuff on CDMA. Because everything on CDMA was giant, blocky, white labeled HTC phones, like the PPC 6700.

• 6:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Oh, the Moto, Moto Q.

• 6:10Speaker 00

  Moto Q.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  That was, that was 3G.

• 6:12Speaker 00

  That was CDMA, yeah.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Which I thought was, was Edge. I had the E62, the Nokia.

• 6:19Speaker 00

  That thing was hot.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  That was Edge.

• 6:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  That was my, my internet. Yeah, it was just, it was the jump from like a, like a 144 modem, like, like slowest, barely can experience any internet, so you just don't even bother, to actually useful internet on a phone.

• 6:36Speaker 00

  Didn't, didn't, either you lived through like the transition from 3G to LTE?

• 6:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:40Speaker 00

  And was that not like awesome?

• 6:42Speaker 02

  It was cool.

• 6:43Speaker 00

  It was fine.

• 6:44Speaker 03

  I don't remember.

• 6:46Speaker 00

  It's like, imagine going from, I don't know, GPRS, like the original G, the OG.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Wait, so G is not generation, G is GPRS?

• 6:57Speaker 00

  No, G is generation. But GPRS was the first widespread data network that wasn't, that was like, really packet switched and like, actually like internet and not, you know, the crazy pager stuff that BlackBerry and early editions of Palm were using.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  Or like a literal dial-up.

• 7:13Speaker 00

  Right. Well, I mean, you still like use dial-up codes to use GPRS. Yeah. I mean, you'd like program and you didn't listen for like the modem noise. Anyway, that was, it was so bad, you couldn't access the real web. You could only access like the text version of it over WAP. And it was just pitifully slow. And then all of a sudden, you got 2G or CDMA, and you were able to like, look at images on your phone, which is a thing that took half a day before.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  All this to say that.

• 7:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Circuit breaker.

• 7:44Speaker 00

  Why are we talking about old gadgets?

• 7:45Speaker 01

  It's a blog.

• 7:46Speaker 00

  That's what Circuit Breakers are.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  But it's also, it's kind of nerdy.

• 7:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was super nerdy. We're gonna, we're unapologetically nerdy. I want to talk about our favorite gadgets from this week. And I think Nicola actually picked the best one.

• 7:57Speaker 03

  Yeah?

• 7:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:58Speaker 03

  Dyson vacuum maker, et cetera, is now reversing air and making a hair dryer.

• 8:05Speaker 00

  A crazy looking hair dryer.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:07Speaker 00

  Like.

• 8:07Speaker 03

  It's very compact, it's 400 plus dollars.

• 8:11Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 8:12Speaker 03

  And it's supposed to be great.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  Wait, I have a question. It has this like hollow tube. Isn't someone's hair gonna get like sucked into that thing and like ripped out of their head?

• 8:20Speaker 03

  I mean, I'm sure they thought through that. I feel confident they thought through that.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  I mean, it looks like a very beautiful hair dryer.

• 8:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:25Speaker 02

  I would want people to see that in my house and think I'm living in the future. I wouldn't even use it.

• 8:29Speaker 03

  The funniest part to me is like air going, sucking air out versus pushing air in the other direction, like making vacuum cleaner. It's opposite. It's really humorous to me. When I first got that, like, press release, I was like, huh, new directions.

• 8:43Speaker 00

  Are you getting one?

• 8:44Speaker 03

  No.

• 8:44Speaker 00

  No, because it's $400.

• 8:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I got a good guy at home. I don't need a new one.

• 8:48Speaker 00

  Jake, here's your favorite gadget or two from the week.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  Favorite gadget or two. Did you see the Furbo? Ashley shot a video with this.

• 8:55Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  With two adorable dogs yesterday.

• 8:58Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  It's amazing. It like shoots cashews out.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  I mean, does it shoot cashews out?

• 9:04Speaker 03

  It's dog treats, right?

• 9:05Speaker 02

  Oh, dog treats? I don't know. Yeah, it shot something out. Anyway, is this little thing that you can remotely control with your phone? And

• 9:13Speaker 01

  It has like a camera on it?

• 9:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's a camera so you can see your dogs and talk to them. And you can remotely shoot treats out of it. Or I guess you could shoot food into your own mouth if you really wanted to.

• 9:22Speaker 03

  I wonder if this is gonna change dogs' relationships with objects or with love in general?

• 9:32Speaker 03

  Because you have this new talking box that they don't know it's you.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  And they're just gonna sit there and hang out with the box?

• 9:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, and like, listen to it because it's comforting to hear. And then it shoots a treat. Like, it's gonna like the box better than you're gonna come home and it's gonna be like, what?

• 9:44Speaker 02

  Do you think the dog would care about your disembodied voice, though? I feel like no.

• 9:48Speaker 03

  I feel like dogs probably are smart enough to know and like, love certain voices. But what if it gets changed coming through speaker?

• 9:57Speaker 02

  Well, that's the thing, because I've seen people like, video chat, try to video chat, say hi to a dog. Does not work. Dog does not care.

• 10:03Speaker 03

  Really?

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, but there's no food associated with that. If there's food associated with it, the dog will care.

• 10:08Speaker 03

  That's true.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  But they won't care about the human, right?

• 10:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  Which is the enjoyment you get by seeing your dog and having your dog see you. I mean, this is just like, you have to screw with your dog remotely. That's kinda cool.

• 10:18Speaker 03

  Does the dog just ignore the FaceTime? Like, does it just like, not look at it? It just, like how babies with mirrors and...

• 10:24Speaker 02

  I'm assuming there's like, because there's no smell association, they just like, it's just like a totally separate thing.

• 10:30Speaker 03

  Yeah. Like, what's this little box moving on?

• 10:32Speaker 01

  I had a friend who like, trained his dog by watching the dog with a baby monitor. He'd leave food out, watch the dog with a baby monitor, and then could speak through the baby monitor and say, no.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Oh, that's crazy.

• 10:42Speaker 03

  He invented Furbo.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's basically a progenitor of Furbo. But, yeah, apparently these dogs that we tested Furbo on did fall in love with this gadget.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 10:53Speaker 03

  Dogs can love gadgets, too. Circuit Breaker one, week one.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  New fan base.

• 10:58Speaker 00

  For dogs.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  I mean, honestly, if we had more like several photo essays of those dogs every day, I feel like we'd do pretty good.

• 11:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Paul, what's your gadget?

• 11:10Speaker 01

  My favorite gadget was that this company called Zotac put a PC in a backpack. Like, so the big problem with, you know, the Oculus Rift and the Vive is you've got this wire streaming down your neck. And it's a pretty long wire, but you can still get tangled in it and it plugs into a PC.

• 11:29Speaker 00

  Right.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  This puts that wire and plugs it into a PC on your back. But it's like a literal, like, I've seen this cube that they sell, which I'm guessing this is based on. It's still a pretty big PC.

• 11:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:40Speaker 01

  Still a little heavy. It's got to run like that.

• 11:42Speaker 00

  It must have fans to like.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's got to get air through there. And then, yeah, the backpack's impeding the fans. I have no idea how it works or how uncomfortable. Apparently it's going to be maybe at Computex. So we're going to try it out there, but it's just absurd to me and I think it's hilarious. And I really hope, I really want to try it out. I'm just glad people are trying, trying crazy things. But yeah, we'll get to a point where these will be portable and they can all run, you know, and everything's fine and boring. But right now, some crazy person's putting a PC with a GeForce 980 in a backpack.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  For the first subway photo, it's going to go up on Gothamist, somebody wearing that on like on the train.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  I hope it's me. I hope it's me in that subway.

• 12:27Speaker 00

  Mine's a Trivii, which is a Bluetooth speaker that also runs Alexa. And it, you know, it's like bad. It, my deck was like, don't buy one. I bought one.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  Wait, why is it bad? It looks like a really cute, but.

• 12:40Speaker 00

  It's incredibly cute. It's just, it just doesn't sound that good. And if you're not on really good wifi, the Alexa works terribly and it's kind of buggy. But there'll be other ones like this coming soon because Amazon's letting anybody make stuff. But the thing I actually love about it is it's made by this company in Voxia. They're just some like random company that makes random teleconference crap. It's not crap. It's like, whatever. But one of the things they make, they make a wifi box and you plug the wifi. Box into your old style phone line at home or you give it to your mom, plug into her old style phone line at home. And then when you call it, the wifi box picks it up instead of the phone. And then over the internet sends it to the app on your phone and then or on

• 13:22Speaker 00

  your mom's phone and then she could pick it up and talk to you. And if you want to call somebody from your landline, you can open the app, dial their number, it uses the internet to talk to the wifi box, which then uses the old telephone line to dial out. It turns like an old telephone line into an app on your phone.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  Wait, can you also pick up the phone?

• 13:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  Are you turning old timey phones?

• 13:44Speaker 00

  Old timey phones.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  We've got landlines.

• 13:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  And then we've got this wifi box.

• 13:50Speaker 00

  Right.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  Is this wifi box coming before the landline? Or is the landline hitting the wifi box?

• 13:56Speaker 00

  It's like if you have two phones in your house, one's a regular old timey phone and one is this wifi box. And if you want the wifi box can pick up and send it to your app.

• 14:06Speaker 03

  I feel like it's used. Why is the opposite of having a burner phone? Because it's like you have this second phone number that you're extremely attached to.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:15Speaker 00

  But you really have to leave it like as a landline.

• 14:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, like a legacy, like decades and decades of this phone number.

• 14:21Speaker 00

  See, I want to get this for my parents because I always go through the thing where like I got to call my parents and they still have a landline. So I just call that. But if they're not home, then I have to deal with like, well, do I call mom or do I call dad? Which one of these two am I going to call and who's going to feel bad if I don't?

• 14:35Speaker 02

  Wait, so instead they'll both have the app and both of their phones will ring and they'll fight to pick it up?

• 14:39Speaker 00

  Yeah. And that's not my problem.

• 14:41Speaker 03

  It'll be like a quick draw situation.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah, I'm sure this will be much simpler for them.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  This will solve all the problems.

• 14:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  But the tribby is cool because it's just such a gadget. It's got this like you like

• 14:54Speaker 00

  I wish I brought it down here.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  You draw on your phone a message that you want to be on the tribby and then the tribby like pops out this little flag that's like plastic. And I don't know, it's just hilarious.

• 15:04Speaker 00

  You stick it on your fridge?

• 15:06Speaker 01

  It's like an Easy-Bake Oven. I don't know.

• 15:08Speaker 00

  Of communication. I mean, I bought one. I don't know why. It's a, it's $200.

• 15:13Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 15:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's really expensive.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  Is that like the cheapest way to, okay, not the cheapest way.

• 15:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, a Dada is even less than that, I think.

• 15:22Speaker 03

  I think it's a hundred.

• 15:22Speaker 00

  Or a tap, rather.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. Well, then.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Is there gonna be an Alexa app for the phone, for phones? Like, if they're opening it up to all these manufacturers, why can't I talk to Alexa?

• 15:31Speaker 00

  There's a Cortana app for Android.

• 15:34Speaker 02

  But that's like a hassle, right? The entire point of Alexa is like, it's just sitting around somewhere, listening.

• 15:38Speaker 00

  Right. It's gonna be in everything.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I mean, it's gonna be cool, because it'll be in things. It'll just start, I assume it'll be like, the control scheme for things, too, right?

• 15:46Speaker 00

  Well, the reason that Alexa is cool as like, a thing in your house to control other things is, Jake, you've been reporting on how the smart home is a disaster, and there's like, too many competing standards, and nobody knows who's gonna win. And it's, you know, HomeKit versus, I forget what Google's crap is called.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  Well, there's like, Brillo and whatever the other, Weave.

• 16:06Speaker 00

  Weave, right. Well, Weave is a way to program Brillo or something, or is it the other way around? Whatever. It's confusing.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Operating system.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  There's SmartThings, there's blah, blah, blah. And Amazon just like, rolled in and said, "We'll just talk to all of them." And it became the abstraction layer on top of all of those other gadgets.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  Which is crazy, because that's exactly what like, SmartThings is doing. Amazon doesn't have like, its own standard or anything. It's just like, everybody, like, please, don't worry about it. It's chill. Just talk to, talk to our thing. It'll be good.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  And apparently, that's working. Apparently, that's been really easy for people. Whereas, this other stuff, it still feels like there's way too many layers going on.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  I would not have picked Amazon to solve this problem.

• 16:48Speaker 00

  No, I don't think Amazon would have picked Amazon to solve this problem. I think Amazon had no idea what it had on its hands with Alexa. They just posted earnings. They said they did really well.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  Which is weird, because when the Echo was first announced, I remember being in the office, and we were all just like, "This is the weirdest thing Amazon has ever done." Like, they just put up a webpage for it, and we were trying to make sense of what this thing was.

• 17:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, we didn't know what the hell it was. We were like, like, trying to understand it. Like, we're like, "It's a speaker, I guess."

• 17:16Speaker 01

  It sounded like it was mostly a Bluetooth speaker. Maybe you could talk to it.

• 17:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  Even in our review, I feel like, it was still not totally clear what the Echo was. And then it has evolved so much over like, a year.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  There is something about, like, did you, you ever have connected? With the Xbox One.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  I never had.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Like, uh, cause Microsoft has completely abandoned this plan as well, but there was a time in your life where you had to get connect with the Xbox One. And you could say Xbox on.

• 17:44Speaker 00

  You still can do that if you want.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  You could still do it.

• 17:47Speaker 00

  It's terrible.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  But the idea that you could say Xbox on and then like turn on your TV and everything, get everything running. It was cool. And like, I had that brief moment in my life where I lived like that. And now anytime like I want my Xbox be on or my TV to be on, I like feel myself almost saying it.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  Are you all comfortable just like talking to different random things in your house? Cause I'm still like, even if I'm home alone. I'm still like, I, I'm not ready to shout like, okay, Google do this or that.

• 18:15Speaker 00

  So I.

• 18:16Speaker 03

  Fine about it.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:18Speaker 00

  It's, it's once you start doing.

• 18:19Speaker 02

  What if other people are around?

• 18:20Speaker 00

  What if other people?

• 18:23Speaker 03

  Hopefully there are people you've keep close to yourself because they're in your house. So they should accept you for who you are, even if you yell at stuff.

• 18:29Speaker 00

  Let me, let me ask you this. Do you cook and or clean?

• 18:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 18:34Speaker 00

  Are you sure? Cause like, that's the perfect moment for these things when you're like otherwise occupied and like cooking, like doing the dishes or like cleaning or whatever, cooking is like really boring. You're like, eh, da, da, da. And like, you can get into zen mode and get into it, but I can't. Uh, and so I'm like, I need something else to talk to my attention. Oh, my hands are wet. Uh, uh, oh, hey, I can just yell out into the room to be entertained and be entertained.

• 18:56Speaker 02

  Okay. So here's the thing. Frequently I'll be like chopping up peppers or something is going on for a while.

• 19:01Speaker 00

  Chop peppers.

• 19:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. I would love to just scroll through an article that I have pulled up on my phone.

• 19:06Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 19:06Speaker 02

  And I can't do that because that's, you have to take your hands off the knife. But like, that's not something that, like, what can talking allow you to do for me?

• 19:14Speaker 00

  Classic Samsung phone where you can gesture.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  That actually is what I want, which is really depressing. But like, right, like I, I don't understand what I can get from talking to it. Like I'm, I don't care about what the score of the Mets game is.

• 19:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. I will say like, as much as I love this concept.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Get a flash briefing, get like all the news of the day. Every time you ask Trivi about the weather, like Trivi says way too many things.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  I don't know. I didn't need to know all things about.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't want a flash briefing. I want to. Like the specific article.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:43Speaker 03

  You want to be like Alexa, read to me.

• 19:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that would be cool.

• 19:47Speaker 03

  Articles on tape.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  I would use that. Or even, I don't know, if it could just be like, hey, scroll down the page, please. Like, that would be dope. I would be into that.

• 19:55Speaker 03

  Oh, so you'd be, you're using a knife with your hand and a pepper and you're looking somewhere else?

• 20:02Speaker 02

  Maybe.

• 20:02Speaker 03

  I don't think that's great.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  Well, okay, that, this is a fair point, but the point is, I still do not know how to entertain myself with Alexa or Siri or whatnot. Just don't know, like, what they're going to do for minutes at a time to entertain me while I'm cooking and cleaning. Like, I understand that I could fire off a message or two, but, I mean, to keep you occupied for like 15 minutes?

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Can Alexa play like audible books?

• 20:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, I would do a lot of that.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  I think so. I could definitely do Spotify. It definitely does like, I listen to NPR on it all the time.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  I guess that's cool. I guess that lets you like, especially if you're listening to music, you can kind of just quickly change between different things, which I have not tried.

• 20:43Speaker 00

  Okay, so.

• 20:44Speaker 03

  So.

• 20:44Speaker 00

  Google has a hardware division now.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  This should be really cool.

• 20:49Speaker 00

  They have been making random stuff in random parts of the company for a while, but now they just have a hardware division for phones and tablets and laptops.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  Do you think this means that?

• 20:58Speaker 00

  A tap is in there.

• 20:59Speaker 02

  That Google wants to make a profit on hardware?

• 21:05Speaker 02

  Like, does Google want to start competing with like?

• 21:08Speaker 00

  Do they actually want to sell, successfully sell things to people who buy things in like, large numbers?

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:13Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  And this is a division of Google. This isn't part of, this is another alphabet.

• 21:20Speaker 00

  No, this is a part of Google and it's being led by Rick Osterloh, who used to be CEO of Motorola and is like, I don't know, a very nice guy. He's a nice guy.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  He seems like a cool dude.

• 21:31Speaker 03

  He's a nice guy.

• 21:32Speaker 00

  He's just a nice guy. Yeah.

• 21:34Speaker 03

  Outside of perspective, why didn't they have this already?

• 21:37Speaker 00

  That's a great question. They make routers, they make Chromecast, they just like, didn't have a hardware person in charge of all those things.

• 21:44Speaker 03

  Just like a streamlining thing, bringing everyone together.

• 21:46Speaker 00

  So the one thing they won't cop to is whether or not they're making phones. Like, they're still with the Nexus program, letting other companies make phones. And the rumor, everybody agrees, is that HTC is making the next Nexus phone. Would you buy a Google phone if Google made the phone?

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 22:00Speaker 00

  Maybe.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  I mean, the Pixel's great. How much of that is truly engineered in-house?

• 22:04Speaker 00

  All of it. The Pixel is like the the main thing that they that really kicked them off in making stuff in-house.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, but the Pixel is great, but you wouldn't buy it because it's a $1,000 Chromebook.

• 22:14Speaker 00

  Right.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  Like, is Google's other hardware gonna be the same way? Is it gonna be something you'd buy?

• 22:18Speaker 00

  I mean, the Pixel C is, I mean, I think it's it's like the price of a tablet, but I think it's too expensive because Android tablets are garbage.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Remember when they came out with that sphere?

• 22:28Speaker 00

  The Q. The next Q. Google made that, too. That was actually that was actually the first thing.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  That was like a it was like a Google TV kind of device that was gonna be all made in the US somehow.

• 22:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  It was like ridiculously heavy.

• 22:40Speaker 00

  It was audio only, though.

• 22:42Speaker 03

  What did it do?

• 22:43Speaker 00

  It was a sphere, but this big, about the size of like a small cantaloupe.

• 22:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:47Speaker 00

  I guess. And the top twisted and it lit up and you plugged a speaker into it and you used it to play music. And it costs like $300.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  What?

• 22:57Speaker 03

  Wait, how did the music get on the sphere?

• 23:00Speaker 00

  What's that? Why is it a big, heavy sphere?

• 23:01Speaker 03

  No, how like, what music are you listening to on it from where?

• 23:05Speaker 01

  Play?

• 23:06Speaker 00

  Google Play.

• 23:06Speaker 02

  Wait, this was literally just like.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  I really thought it was a TV thing.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  $300.

• 23:12Speaker 00

  Uh, it was a media streamer, but like it was a problem.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  This is before Chromecast.

• 23:17Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, yeah, okay, it had HDMI out, but like, everybody was not using it for that.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  All right. I don't think anybody used it.

• 23:23Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, they canceled it.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  Total failure.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay, how was it so bad? Because I I missed this. How was it so bad? That they canceled, they announced it and then canceled it within like a month?

• 23:34Speaker 00

  Because it was crazy expensive. It was $300.

• 23:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, but most companies, there's like, you've built it, you've manufactured a bunch of them, you still like go and sell them. But like, Google, it wouldn't even sell them. I thought it even refunded the people who bought. Like, how was it that bad?

• 23:48Speaker 01

  That sounds like a company that needs its own hardware division to get better at this sort of stuff.

• 23:53Speaker 03

  It's kind of cool looking, though. I'm looking at it now.

• 23:55Speaker 00

  It like, yeah, it can only do like play movies and YouTube videos. It was dumb.

• 24:01Speaker 03

  It has a lot of plugs coming out.

• 24:03Speaker 00

  What's weird, what's crazy is the way that it worked is basically the same way the Chromecast works. Only the Chromecast wasn't insane. It was $35 instead of $300. So, I don't know, we'll see. I don't think they're gonna make phones yet. But the crazy thing to me, the craziest thing about this, so Glass wasn't technically in Nest. I got that. I misspoke on Twitter, but it was under control of Tony Fadell, who in Nest has been having a real hard time. And now it's part of this hardware group. And the ATAP group, which makes all the crazy shit, they make like touch sensitive fabric and they were making modular phones. And they're the ones who came up with Project Tango and like all the like wild consumer stuff is also in the hardware division.

• 24:44Speaker 02

  Well, sorry, this.

• 24:45Speaker 00

  And they lost Regina Dugan.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was gonna say, who's running ATAP now?

• 24:48Speaker 00

  Apparently Rick Astorlo.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  Okay, still, that's a huge loss for ATAP.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  And are you saying Tony Fadell is off Glass now?

• 24:55Speaker 00

  Right. He was just sort of like hanging on to it on the side.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Can you explain to me why people hate Tony Fadell at Google?

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Because I'm getting this vibe, like, I thought everybody loved Tony Fadell.

• 25:09Speaker 00

  Uh, people.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  I've met Tony Fadell.

• 25:12Speaker 00

  When they bought Dropcam, people, the, the culture clashed pretty hard there. And people are saying that he's basically like a classic, like Jobsian kind of tyrant inside. There you go. I, I cannot speak to precisely why, because I'm not good friends with Tony Fadell. I don't know him. I don't want to speak ill of him. I feel like I'm also terrified of him. So please, Tony, don't, don't hurt me.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  Glass needs some huge technological breakthrough, or it's just gonna look dumb compared to like HoloLens and Magic Leap.

• 25:42Speaker 00

  I think that that's the plan is to forget that it existed and they'll, they'll release a version that's like okay for doctors. And that'll be the end of it.

• 25:50Speaker 02

  That was what was weird. The rumors coming out is that even under Fadell, it sounded like they were gonna do a similar thing. Like maybe for enterprise, but it's, I mean, were they still gonna work on a consumer version of Glass? Because it seemed like a totally failed product.

• 26:03Speaker 00

  They were going to work on like an enterprise version of it.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 26:05Speaker 00

  That's the plan. Some kind of like, you know, your cable repair person will have one of these and they'll get schematics on it or something.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  The glasses is special to me because it did not fail because of the technology. It was a failure socially.

• 26:20Speaker 00

  Right.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  Hmm. It's just a weird thing that there was a

• 26:23Speaker 00

  If only there had been

• 26:24Speaker 01

  A social backlash against a nascent device.

• 26:27Speaker 00

  If only there had been like a pure gadget blog.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Tell people why they shouldn't care.

• 26:33Speaker 00

  I think it's weird that ATAP is in the Google hardware division and not part of Google X. I think that there's like big friction between like Google X and

• 26:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, ATAP does, I mean, sometimes it makes

• 26:45Speaker 00

  Whatever.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  Products that can go to market, right? The customizable phones, which I'm blanking on the name of.

• 26:51Speaker 00

  That's Project Ara and it's like only sort of getting there.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  Right.

• 26:55Speaker 00

  That's been super delayed.

• 26:56Speaker 02

  That could be a legitimate consumer business. I understand that being part of Google, they're essentially just Android phones. But then it's also making like connected fabric and stuff, which does not at all make sense inside of Google. Like that seems like why ATAP was separate or at least semi separate for a while.

• 27:13Speaker 00

  Well, the ATAP's thing is like, we need to, within two years, we need to come up with an idea and then produce it at convincing scale. And convincing scale is like, this could be a product if we wanted it to be. And then if it fails, they walk away and do the next thing. It totally should be inside the X division, but like, I don't know, Astro hates them. I have no idea. It's very weird.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  So much drama. I just think it's weird. This is a huge company that like, all these people are fighting. I know people fight at companies sometimes, but this is weird.

• 27:41Speaker 00

  Well, I don't, I mean, they couldn't, maybe they're not, but I'm, I don't know. That's where it belongs, right? X is the place where they make self-driving cars and crazy kites that turn into windmills. They're making, have you heard of the, I forget what it's called, Project Wing, I think? Or no, it's something else. Matarri? I don't know. Anyway. You know how a windmill works, right? I'm waving my arms around, right? Imagine instead of

• 28:04Speaker 02

  If you could continue to demonstrate stuff.

• 28:06Speaker 00

  Instead of giant fans, there's just some string. And the string goes out and at the end of the string is a kite. And then they just put 50 of those in a circle. And then those are the things that spin. And then that powers the windmill.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  So many tangles.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  That sounds like some like hippie BS.

• 28:24Speaker 00

  I know.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  What if we use kites instead of blades? The world would be way more peaceful. Like, is that going to save them money? I don't get it.

• 28:34Speaker 00

  Well, you can, you can, the kites can go way further out, you know, because I'm waving my arms again. Because they can be further out than the, the fan of a blade. And so therefore they get more power.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  You can use wild colors to bring joy to viewers.

• 28:49Speaker 03

  Energizing our souls.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  Glad Google is doing this.

• 28:51Speaker 00

  Why is the, why is the division that makes self-driving cars and crazy like internet drones and crazy internet balloons? And self-delivery drones? Why are they separate from the part of the company that makes touch sensitive fabric? And little chips that can detect millimeter motion, you know, above them. So you can have touchless control of things and 3D sensing cameras. Why are those separate?

• 29:14Speaker 02

  All the things that you just named, aside from the fabric, but like the, the touchless controls? That is something that would be great for a very serious hardware division.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  Right, right. Like think, think about the R and D that Apple does, like they did 3D touch. They've got like the, I think we all have track pads now that don't click, but feel like they click.

• 29:33Speaker 00

  Well, Nicole's track pad clicks.

• 29:36Speaker 02

  Oh, I have a real click over here as well.

• 29:37Speaker 00

  You got a real click?

• 29:39Speaker 03

  You know, wait, why?

• 29:40Speaker 00

  My, my track pad doesn't click. It only, it only gives me the impression.

• 29:43Speaker 03

  Do you have to tap it? I hate that.

• 29:45Speaker 00

  No, you don't have to. You can still push it.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  You push it and you can select how resistive it is.

• 29:50Speaker 00

  You don't know about a force touch track pad? Oh, it's so cool. So it's just a little, got a little squishy thing on it. And when you push on it, it detects the push. And then there's a little motor that like goes at you and you feel the click.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:00Speaker 00

  So you're not actually clicking a physical thing. It's clicking at you.

• 30:03Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 30:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:04Speaker 03

  Click back.

• 30:05Speaker 00

  How cool is that?

• 30:06Speaker 03

  They should have let me name this.

• 30:07Speaker 00

  Right, so there, there is.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's way better than force touch, right?

• 30:10Speaker 03

  Click back.

• 30:10Speaker 00

  Click back.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Click back. So there is, yeah, I, I think exactly. You have, even for Google Glass, you can see how like touchable material that has electronics in it could be interesting. But yeah, they need to make products out of that stuff. They don't need to just hang out and play around. So maybe this hardware division will focus that energy into real products.

• 30:30Speaker 00

  So, okay, so what does Google actually make hardware wise? They make the Pixel, the Pixel C, the Chromecast. The OnHub is made by somebody else. The Nexus phones are made by somebody else. I guess they make glass, they make glass. You know, but like none of the stuff that, other than the Chromecast, none of the stuff that Google like directly makes itself is like a huge massive slash success.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  And the Chromecast, I mean.

• 30:53Speaker 00

  Chromecast is a huge success.

• 30:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it does nothing. Like it's, it's like one little thing. It's as cheap as, like that's, that seems like the least hardware work possible for them. Which I guess, right? Like, I don't know. I mean, what, what do you think that Google wants out of this hardware division?

• 31:07Speaker 00

  I don't know. They just, they, they consolidated everything and put, uh, the former head of Motorola in charge of it. So presumably they wanna, I don't know, it's the former head of Motorola. So maybe they don't want to sell that much.

• 31:22Speaker 00

  I don't know. What do you think?

• 31:24Speaker 02

  Ah, man, I, I mean, Microsoft did the same thing, right? And then pissed off all of its hardware partners and then didn't get anywhere. And I feel like people aren't banging on the door to buy phones and stuff from Google. They just want a ton of options. And especially within Android, there are so many options there. The hardware that Google does have right now seems to exist entirely as to kind of nudge other hardware manufacturers in certain directions. To say, this is where we're going with the software. This is where we think the ecosystem as a whole should go. And for the most part, it's worked and also it's delivered some very good and cheap phones to huge nerds like us, which is great. And I don't want that to stop because I don't want to pay $700 for a Galaxy.

• 32:09Speaker 00

  Right.

• 32:10Speaker 02

  But yeah, I mean, I can't imagine Google just like ramping up a full scale. Like we want these phones in every single carrier store. We're going to do massive advertising. I mean, I guess that would be a huge business if they could make that succeed.

• 32:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's kind of interesting. Like your first question was what, do they want to be profitable? And if Google decided to make a profitable hardware division that was less based on.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  This world domination with their own operating system, which some of their partners are already, you know, a lot of their partner and Samsung, Samsung especially, kind of toys around with, what if we did a different operating system, you know? If their partners wanted to do something else, Google could be the, be an Apple and not have to be so, I don't know, I feel like Apple is in this good position where they don't have to be as evil as Google.

• 33:04Speaker 00

  I wonder if-

• 33:05Speaker 01

  With their software-

• 33:05Speaker 00

  Right.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  Because they can make profit off of hardware. Google only profits-

• 33:10Speaker 00

  Not so much this last quarter, okay.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  Google only profits off of basically search and Android, right?

• 33:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, they-

• 33:16Speaker 01

  The Play Store a little bit.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  I guess there's also the fact that many countries seem to be concerned about the Google's requirements that Android phones ship with all of its different apps and services. Should that come to pass, that they have to pull back on that, it might make sense as a backup to be selling its own phones that are obviously going to come preloaded with all of that stuff.

• 33:40Speaker 00

  That-

• 33:41Speaker 02

  But that's-

• 33:41Speaker 00

  That whole lawsuit, like, the more I think about this lawsuit in Europe, the like, stupider I think it is.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  It's really dumb.

• 33:46Speaker 00

  Right?

• 33:47Speaker 01

  It's a really competitive landscape right now. People can do whatever they want. I just, I, I, I want Google to piss off all its partners and get like another viable mobile operating system, just for my own joy.

• 34:01Speaker 00

  I mean, that's gonna be, that's gonna be hard.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  It is, it's really hard to make another mobile-

• 34:07Speaker 02

  Okay, here's the thing, the thing that's going on in Europe, the only, the reason we don't have a problem with it is because we're like, wait, but stock Android is so good. But imagine a world in which stock Android is like not good and Google apps are actually carrier bloatware, right? Like, would it be more competitive if actually Samsung could not include any of those apps and then just include its own apps? And then that was what people were used to and that was the only stuff they were using?

• 34:31Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  Right? Then we have this Samsung ecosystem too, built on top of Android, and then we have these competing ecosystems. Could that be cooler? I don't know.

• 34:39Speaker 00

  It could be, but then again-

• 34:40Speaker 01

  We have that with Fire.

• 34:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  With Amazon's Fire tablets, they have their own store.

• 34:45Speaker 02

  Well, in my hypothetical world, it's working out much nicer than that.

• 34:50Speaker 00

  Oh shit, we haven't talked about like the most important Google news of the week, which is Chromebooks are gonna be able to run like any Android app.

• 34:57Speaker 03

  Pretty neato.

• 34:58Speaker 00

  Would you want to run an iPhone app on your MacBook?

• 35:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm sure there's plenty of things I'd like to do on the computer instead of a phone.

• 35:05Speaker 00

  I mean, I hope that it happens, if only because it might make Android apps on tablets, not garbage. All Android apps, not all, a bunch of Android apps, even Google's own apps, like Google Docs on a tablet is not a good app. It's a terrible app. But if they can run them on Chromebooks, then all of a sudden it goes from like the 10 people who bought a Pixel C to the millions of schoolchildren who are using Chromebooks, and they'll have to make it better.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  I would hope. I like this theory. You ran this by me before. I'm into it.

• 35:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's, I mean, I would love it for that to happen. It's really fascinating that Google is trying to scale Android from like, it's very good and successful on phones, but like, it hasn't worked on tablets yet.

• 35:51Speaker 00

  It worked on the Nexus 7.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  That was in like 2012.

• 35:58Speaker 02

  We're still remembering the glory days of the Nexus 7. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, is going to a bigger screen size really going to be the thing that saves them? But the thing, the other thing is, these apps, you can still run them in their like, small little phone size on a Chromebook, right?

• 36:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm sure. And I would totally do that, too. Just, you know, like, when I look at my monitor right now, like Twitter is like a phone app, basically.

• 36:20Speaker 02

  Are there a lot of great Android apps that don't have great web apps?

• 36:25Speaker 00

  Instagram.

• 36:26Speaker 02

  Okay. Instagram has a website.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can go to the website, but you can't take pictures. You can't add stuff to it.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true. Yeah, I don't know.

• 36:35Speaker 00

  Games, games.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  You gotta play a game on your laptop, like a mobile game on your laptop?

• 36:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, why not?

• 36:41Speaker 01

  You know, like tap the screen to jump?

• 36:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'll do it. Just you wait. Play Dots. I played Dots on a Chromebook.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  No, I mean, I definitely like the idea, though, because the thing is like Chromebooks right now, we still sort of think of them as these things that are like, not quite there because they don't have real apps, they're just the web. But suddenly, if they can run Android apps, then we're building this, well, I mean, are the Android apps running locally? Or are they in the cloud somehow?

• 37:05Speaker 00

  TBD.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  I mean, if they're in the cloud, that's crazy, because then you have all of this, I mean, Google is just slowly... This is what I was thinking of.

• 37:12Speaker 00

  You're talking about the death of the web now.

• 37:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, all right, so let me back up a second. So I was at Google's office earlier today and they're showing this new HP Chromebook 13 and they're like, "Look how cool cloud, like virtualized apps are through Citrix." And I was like, "Snooze, this is boring." But here's the thing, so they had like, you know, PowerPoint up or whatever and it was just like running like PowerPoint. And that's fine, I'm not going to set up a virtual server, that's never gonna happen. But imagine if all these Android apps are coming from the cloud as well. If that's the case, then you have this, like, basically shell of a computer that is able to do, you know, whatever, because it's not running on a computer. And Google is like, sort of like, backdooring its way into this. I feel like this has been this idea for a while.

• 37:55Speaker 00

  Thin client. The thin client. This is the dream of the 90s, this is the dream of the 70s.

• 38:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. Is the Chromebook it?

• 38:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:04Speaker 02

  Could be.

• 38:04Speaker 00

  Why not?

• 38:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, which I think that'd be really cool if that's what happens. If, you know, I don't know how well Chromebook would run an Android app otherwise, I guess it would be functional.

• 38:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's really cool, except that when you don't have good connectivity, it all goes to hell. Right. Like, I know that's like a really basic argument, but it's still true.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  Connectivity is not perfect.

• 38:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it bugs me because the rise of the Chromebook coincides with like me learning to program and starting to like love my terminal.

• 38:32Speaker 00

  Right.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  And like this idea that like, I love just being at the low level on my computer and I'm a hacker. I can change folders, I can copy files from one folder to another with the terminal. You can program and you can create your own software and you can run it all.

• 38:46Speaker 00

  Remember the first time you typed make dir?

• 38:48Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, I love make dir.

• 38:50Speaker 00

  You can touch a file.

• 38:52Speaker 03

  I don't know, I need to.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  If you type, if you go to your terminal right now and you type touch and then space and then the file name, it creates an empty file of that name.

• 39:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:02Speaker 03

  Just like to make one?

• 39:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, just to have a file.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  And if you type.

• 39:06Speaker 00

  With the power, with the power of your words, you created a digital thing out of nothing.

• 39:11Speaker 03

  Okay, that's kind of interesting.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  If you type vim, space, the file name, you'll open it up in a text editor that you will not know how to quit out of.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  And if you open it up in Emacs, you will literally never be able to.

• 39:27Speaker 00

  What if you open it up in both Vim and Emacs at the same time? Your computer explodes.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  No, it'd be fine.

• 39:32Speaker 00

  All right.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  It'd be fine. Yeah.

• 39:34Speaker 00

  All right.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  It'd be fine. But the Chromebooks, you can like hack them. They're running Linux, just like Android is running on Linux. And you can like hack them and have access to the real Linux. And I wish they were going more in that direction. I wish Google decided to make like a really great Linux distro. Instead of like bolting Android on, which is like my least favorite Google product, on to.

• 39:56Speaker 02

  Android is your least favorite.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, Chrome seems so clean to me. It's a browser, which is the most important thing.

• 40:00Speaker 00

  Have you seen the material design update?

• 40:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm running Canary. I've got it on my Chrome browser. It's not, it's not fully, fully, fully done yet. But yeah, I'm excited about that. It's fine.

• 40:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's fine. I don't know. I'm bouncing between Chrome and Safari right now. Chrome is.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  Safari, come on.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  Dude, I'm using this, I'm using the last year's MacBook. It is slow as hell. It.

• 40:23Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. All right.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Okay, Apple. Next Apple Watch is gonna have faster processor and cellular connectivity.

• 40:34Speaker 03

  So then what can you do? Make calls?

• 40:37Speaker 01

  Maybe make calls?

• 40:38Speaker 03

  Or I guess get stuff when you're not.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  Get data without your phone?

• 40:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, you could go for a run without having to have your phone also there to log.

• 40:45Speaker 03

  That'd be nice, because then you can listen to, um, maybe you can listen to music?

• 40:50Speaker 00

  Stream Apple music?

• 40:52Speaker 03

  With.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  This doesn't seem like it would work. They can barely do battery life right now.

• 40:56Speaker 03

  Mine's dead right now.

• 40:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, I mean, so everybody wrote their like one year of Apple Watch anniversary articles, and we didn't write one. Mostly because I like, I had already gotten all of my complaints about the Apple Watch out like last month when I wrote that thing about if your, if your watch takes more than three seconds to do something, you blew it. But like, the basic attitude of literally everything I've read it, one year of the Apple Watch, what do we think is like, man, it sold really well. Kind of sucks.

• 41:23Speaker 02

  Okay, but the problem, the problem isn't the hardware. I don't think the problem is the hardware at all.

• 41:28Speaker 00

  Unless it's the battery, size of the battery.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  I mean, the battery, I've. I

• 41:32Speaker 00

  If it had a bigger battery, the screen could be on all the time.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  9% of the time. I mean, that's never been a problem for me. The screen's always always on when I want to look at it.

• 41:39Speaker 00

  It's crazy. Maybe mine's broken.

• 41:40Speaker 02

  Battery lasts until the end of the day. Of course, the battery only lasts until the end of the day because I don't really use it. But that, I mean, that that is the problem. The problem is that Apple has not given me something that I can use beyond getting notifications. And that's all it's going to be, just for notifications. That's cool. But like, make it the best star notification experience. Like, I don't know.

• 41:59Speaker 00

  It's a terrible notification experience.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  Am I gonna have to pay like Verizon to hook up my Apple Watch now?

• 42:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, maybe. Well.

• 42:06Speaker 02

  I'm not gonna do that.

• 42:07Speaker 00

  AT&T lets you have the same number. I don't, they do charge an extra like five, 10 bucks a month.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  Five dollars a month to have a connected Apple Watch? Like, that's not the new feature I want. Like, the feature I want is something that makes it like actually work better.

• 42:20Speaker 00

  Yeah. Do you know what the buttons do and the knobs?

• 42:23Speaker 03

  I'm slow. Actually, I'm trying to give my Apple Watch a real second chance. I've been wearing it for a whole week.

• 42:30Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 42:31Speaker 03

  Straight. And yeah, I'm, we're kind of, it's.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  How much?

• 42:35Speaker 00

  I don't know if they do. I know what they do, but like when I like go down to do something to it.

• 42:38Speaker 03

  Honestly, like, I like it for workout stuff, like tracking things. I like to look at numbers when I'm done and be like, I did do that much. Like, I took a bike ride and I was like, I wonder how, I wonder how fast my heart goes when I am riding a bike. Like, that's interesting to me. Um, but then like during the work day and stuff, I'm just always accidentally archiving emails that I don't want to do that.

• 43:00Speaker 00

  Right?

• 43:00Speaker 03

  Yeah. Actually, I spent most of this week untangling the relationship of Vogue and Apple, which really hinges on the Apple Watch and will be on both of our websites tomorrow.

• 43:10Speaker 00

  Ooh.

• 43:10Speaker 03

  Wrapped in the verge with Kwame. And because, because the Met Ball is coming up, which Apple is sponsoring on Monday night.

• 43:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, what, give us a preview of what's gonna happen on Monday.

• 43:20Speaker 03

  The annual fundraiser for the Costume Institute, which is like the archival clothing department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art here in New York, is having their yearly benefit. And it's this like crazy red carpet where celebrities from all genres will be there.

• 43:36Speaker 00

  Who's gonna be there?

• 43:36Speaker 03

  Like your Beyonce's, like.

• 43:38Speaker 00

  Like your Beyonce's.

• 43:40Speaker 03

  She shut it down last year. It was like Kim came and then like a little while later Rihanna came and I was like, ooh. And then a little while later Beyonce came and it just was like, oh, and everything. And then whatever. But, but, so it's a huge red carpet, whatever, it's like big splashy, like the most aspirational thing in pop culture, I think, right now.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 44:00Speaker 03

  Grander than the Oscars, grander than the Grammys, et cetera. And Apple is the sole sponsor this year, putting all the funding dollars behind, which would be many dollars, I assume.

• 44:11Speaker 02

  What does that sponsorship get it, other than the like headlines, "Apple is sponsoring this thing"?

• 44:17Speaker 03

  Like, they, yeah, so they get almost no say, but they get their little logo on these things. But, as I time lined obsessively, I think they got a lot more out of the deal than just this, including like 12 consecutive ads a year ago in Vogue that should cost $190,000 per page, but I'm guessing they didn't have to pay for that.

• 44:37Speaker 02

  $190,000.

• 44:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, they got a couple of different covers across like the franchise. They got a lot out of like whatever it is that they did broker. But yeah, so then, so the big, the big thing is on Monday night and it opens this exhibition that is loosely fashion and technology through the ages, but what it really is, is like how machines and hands make clothes. So it's like super granular production. It's about like lace by hand, but then like the machine stitching. It's so, so reachy. And I really think it's because Apple was like, "We want to do, we want to be part of this cultural experience, like we want to be aligned with you, but we have to have the word tech in the name. Like, I don't care what you do, just like, please put tech in this year's exhibit." And they were like, "Okay."

• 45:23Speaker 01

  It's better than like LED dresses.

• 45:26Speaker 03

  I mean, maybe that'll be there.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  No, I'm saying, anything would be better than like LED light up dresses, right?

• 45:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's just gonna be like, I've seen a preview of it and we will have a video actually on The Verge too on Tuesday morning, so you can check it out if you're not actually gonna be able to make it to the museum. But, I don't know. It's gonna be splashy, but like, it's so, it's really, I'm curious, it's really weird to me.

• 45:46Speaker 02

  Are there like going to be Apple Watches there? Or is, you're literally not gonna know Apple's there, or?

• 45:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't think you will.

• 45:52Speaker 02

  Huh, okay, so they just, I mean, I guess it's over this past year, you're saying? They've gotten to be more associated with the fashion world because of this?

• 46:00Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:00Speaker 02

  So it's like ingraining them into it?

• 46:02Speaker 03

  I guess, yeah, it's just like trying to like be part of the, be part of the culture. Basically like trying to buy into a world that they can't seem to get themselves into by them organically. And I kind of go into why Vogue wants to take that from them and vice versa. It's an interesting relationship that you have.

• 46:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's interesting. So when Vogue like decides to put an Apple Watch on its cover, I mean, you're thinking that that's something that they've explicitly worked out, not like Vogue's like, oh, my God, this is so.

• 46:29Speaker 03

  We have to have it. Well, I think there is a little bit from like, I think like Vogue is, they just announced an app today. It's their first app. Why? Did you do that right now? I don't know. But they seem like very like, like fearful about technology and very frazzled and nervous. And it seems like Apple is kind of like the sexiest company that they could like manage aligning themselves with of all, if you have to embrace this new world, whatever. I mean, at the magazine, like, every editor there is over 50. And these people, and like, not that 50 year olds can't be in touch with technology. These are not in touch with the technology. So the minds that are making decisions there are like, uninterested and like, this stuff doesn't come naturally to them. And you can tell throughout the whole

• 47:13Speaker 03

  franchise, but also they have really loose advertorial vibes, like things that are sponsored. There's this Kendall Jenner exclusive issue going out to subscribers only in New York and LA. It's completely sponsored by Estee Lauder, which Kendall Jenner is a face of, but they're saying it's not advertising. It's editorial. Everything's blurry over there.

• 47:36Speaker 00

  I just don't know who Apple needs to convince that they make cool things. Yeah, nobody. They need to convince the Apple people that the Apple Watch is cool.

• 47:44Speaker 03

  That's the thing. Yeah. They only, they haven't talked about phones at all in any of this. It's pure watch.

• 47:50Speaker 00

  Right. Yeah.

• 47:51Speaker 02

  I mean, you don't think that Apple's things are like, less cool and less like aspirational than they used to be? Because I feel like now.

• 47:57Speaker 03

  I think that's dropped.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean.

• 48:00Speaker 00

  Rose gold, though.

• 48:01Speaker 02

  It's a color.

• 48:02Speaker 00

  It's color. Totally a color.

• 48:03Speaker 03

  Dusty salmon.

• 48:04Speaker 00

  Oh, my God. All right. Lightning round. You ready?

• 48:07Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:07Speaker 00

  You ready? Game of Tho- Game of Thrones, season six, episode one.

• 48:11Speaker 03

  I don't watch it.

• 48:11Speaker 02

  Oh, Girls is over.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  I don't know what to eat.

• 48:18Speaker 02

  Great lightning.

• 48:20Speaker 00

  Sans is awesome. Tipping your Uber driver.

• 48:23Speaker 03

  Fascinating. I only like skimmed this, to be honest. And it seems like.

• 48:28Speaker 00

  Uber's real mad at us.

• 48:30Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 48:30Speaker 00

  Because we're like, look, if the drivers get to ask for tips, they're gonna ask for tips. And if you don't tip them, they're gonna give you a low rating. And therefore, you're gonna go down. It was like, no, no, it's totally, it's totally voluntary. It's like.

• 48:42Speaker 03

  Do you understand human nature? These people are trying to get paid.

• 48:46Speaker 00

  Right.

• 48:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't know. I don't understand why, why wouldn't, I mean, I could understand if they were like, oh, we're gonna bake this into the cost. And then people would be angry because Uber costs more and it just started costing so much less. But asking for, it's like, and also the whole, who cares cash, like.

• 49:01Speaker 00

  Right.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, we should just pay them more.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  I didn't read the article.

• 49:06Speaker 00

  I tell you what, I'm gonna start using Lyft. If it becomes like a real genuine thing, like I'm switching to Lyft because they have a tip button in the app. Right? I mean, that's the answer. Because I haven't used Lyft in a long time. You don't, they, you can just get in the backseat and not talk to them, right?

• 49:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:20Speaker 00

  That was the thing when they first launched, you were supposed to get in the front seat and like fist bump and be like, hey, let's chat.

• 49:24Speaker 03

  The mustache.

• 49:25Speaker 00

  Oh, God.

• 49:26Speaker 03

  No.

• 49:26Speaker 00

  No. Wait, I don't want that at all.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  I'm so sorry for not reading this earlier.

• 49:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're a bad person.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  But are you, is this saying that you don't tip them in the app? You have to have cash to tip them? That's ridiculous. What's the point of Uber if you have to have cash?

• 49:40Speaker 00

  Why do you think everyone's so angry?

• 49:43Speaker 01

  Okay, wow. Burn it to the ground.

• 49:46Speaker 00

  Switching to Lyft. All right, cool. US, Intel wants USB-C to replace the headphone jack.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 49:54Speaker 02

  Headphone jack is great. Bring it back.

• 49:56Speaker 00

  It's never gone. It's not gone.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  It's gonna go away. It's, it's a tiny little thing. It's worked just fine. We all have a million pairs of headphones. Leave it there.

• 50:06Speaker 01

  No.

• 50:06Speaker 03

  I don't know enough to care.

• 50:08Speaker 00

  Do you, do you like having a headphone jack?

• 50:10Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 50:10Speaker 00

  Would you mind if all of a sudden, in order to listen to music, you couldn't use that headphone jack? You had to use your lightning port?

• 50:15Speaker 03

  Like a new thing? That'd be annoying.

• 50:17Speaker 00

  Why, why are you so happy about it?

• 50:18Speaker 01

  I love, every, every time Apple's decided to destroy a plug, and not just Apple. Apple's trying to do this. Lots of people are interested right now.

• 50:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  It's been great for society, I feel like.

• 50:29Speaker 00

  Uh.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  And it's USB C.

• 50:30Speaker 00

  Firewire.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, lightning.

• 50:32Speaker 00

  Okay, fine.

• 50:33Speaker 01

  I always want to embrace the craziness that you can get. Here's what, here's what I want.

• 50:36Speaker 00

  Circuit breakers changed you.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  I want a phone that I plug my headphones into and it charges my headphones. And then sometimes when I feel a little zany.

• 50:44Speaker 00

  Charge your phone.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  Let's go get to that later.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  If I feel a little zany, unplug my headphones. Oh, wait, my headphones had electricity going to them this whole time. They're supercharged up and now I can listen wirelessly and everything's great. I just think it's, I think it's gonna be cool, new things that will happen because of this. Yeah, we probably should, if we want to be slow and, and, and special about it, we could, we could have headphones that work off of USB C. And also still have the headphone jack.

• 51:13Speaker 00

  But.

• 51:13Speaker 01

  But I think we got that.

• 51:14Speaker 02

  I feel like the headphone jack is not causing any problems right now.

• 51:17Speaker 00

  USB C, the iPhone's using lightning.

• 51:19Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 51:20Speaker 00

  And so now it's like, not only will you have iPhone versus Android, you're gonna have like.

• 51:24Speaker 01

  Apple.

• 51:24Speaker 00

  My head, can I borrow your headphones?

• 51:25Speaker 01

  No.

• 51:26Speaker 00

  Apple should.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  No, you can't. Apple should move to USB C and I would really love it if they would.

• 51:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, I agree. Uh, okay, two more and then we gotta go. Actually, no, I'm, I'm doing it. Lemonade.

• 51:35Speaker 02

  Cool. Yeah. I liked when she was underwater.

• 51:38Speaker 03

  The beginning?

• 51:39Speaker 02

  No, I mean, there it is, is so visually cool, but also, yeah, anyway, oh, it's great.

• 51:44Speaker 01

  Who has the time to watch an hour long album? I watched like five seconds. I was like, this looks really cool, but I gotta go to bed.

• 51:51Speaker 00

  I'm saving it for the weekend.

• 51:52Speaker 03

  You're insane. I signed up for HBO Now and all of that jazz. I did so much work to watch it when it, it was a lot of work.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  Was it worth it?

• 52:01Speaker 03

  I had to change passwords. I had to change payment methods. I had to use my phone and my computer and my TV to make it happen. And I did it and I watched and it was great. And I, as soon as it ended, I was like, I don't envy anyone who has to write this think piece. Cause it is a fuck ton to unpack.

• 52:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  Jameson's think piece, he did a pretty good job.

• 52:20Speaker 03

  Actually, think about him a lot when these things happen. So I'm like, oh, Jameson, self-proclaimed media puppy has to handle this.

• 52:27Speaker 00

  I've actually been trying to avoid spoilers, which is a really weird thing to say about this album event, like video thing.

• 52:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  Wait for the twist when she sings a ballad.

• 52:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  What would the twist be?

• 52:39Speaker 03

  Dude, you don't even know what happens in this.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  No, I have no idea.

• 52:43Speaker 02

  Legitimately a plot.

• 52:44Speaker 03

  I wanna tell you.

• 52:44Speaker 00

  So I know there's a plot, I like know more than I should right now. I've been trying to.

• 52:48Speaker 03

  I don't wanna spoil it for deets.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  I'm sorry for being so uncultured.

• 52:53Speaker 00

  SpaceX Mars 2018.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  I'm going.

• 52:57Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 52:58Speaker 03

  Cool.

• 52:58Speaker 00

  Follow Verge.

• 52:59Speaker 02

  You literally just said three things that sounded good.

• 53:01Speaker 00

  On Twitter, yeah. On Twitter, we're Verge, on Snapchat, we're Verge, on Instagram, we're Verge. We also have Circuit Breaker, which you should definitely follow on Facebook, facebook.com/circuitbreaker. That's also on Twitter, it's other places as well. You can like us on iTunes, you really ought to. In addition to The Verge Cast, there's also Control, Alt, Delete, there's What's Tech, there's Verge ESP. Recode's got a bunch of podcasts, you should listen to all those.

• 53:26Speaker 01

  I was on What's Tech this week.

• 53:27Speaker 00

  Paul was on What's Tech this week, talking about Circuit Breaker, probably more intelligently than I did about Circuit Breaker.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  More intelligently than I, than I, when I spoke about Circuit Breaker. I don't think I did, I didn't, I don't know.

• 53:39Speaker 00

  Fine.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  It was a great podcast, and it's worth listening to, but if you want the most precise definition of a gadget blog, which I attempt to give, I don't think I did a great job with that. But I loved the conversation.

• 53:50Speaker 00

  I'm at Backline, Nicola's Nicola underscore Fumo, Paul is Future Paul, Jake is Jake underscore K.

• 53:54Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 53:55Speaker 00

  Yes. Thanks for watching, everybody, or listening, or whatever you're doing in order to consume this content. We'll see you next time.

• 54:02Speaker 03

  Bye.

• 54:02Speaker 01

  Bye.

• 54:02Speaker 02

  Bye.

• 54:03Speaker 00

  Paul.