Mac craziness, YouTube TV, and Project Scorpio

Hey! The Verge has brought you another episode of The Vergecast. This week we’ve got Nilay, Paul, Ashley, and Dieter talkin’ the tech talk to y’all: more specifically the future of Mac computers, Youtube TV, and the newest Android phones on the market. As always, Paul and Ashley share their gadget of the week, and Nilay makes fun of Dieter for wearing AirPods. Listen to the whole show for more. 02:50 - Apple working on “completely rethought” Mac Pro and pro display 28:30 - Paul’s weekly segment “Here’s a new phone!” 29:09 - Ashley’s weekly segment “Huh, this looks a lot like a beehive” 31:15 - YouTube TV 42:30 - HTC U Ultra, LG G6, and other Android phones 52:54 - Project Scorpio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of this, our, our, our website and media brand called The Verge, which is about technology, feelings, Mac Pro feelings. We've had a lot of, it was an emotional week here at theverge.com. Anyway, I'm here with you, the listener. I am

• 0:25Speaker 01

  All by yourself.

• 0:26Nilay Patel?

  All alone. Dieter Bohn is here, as you may have noticed by his rude interruption. Hello, Dieter. Oath. Oath is watching us at all times. Paul Miller's here. Listen to that laugh.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 0:38Nilay Patel?

  Where the hell have you been?

• 0:39Speaker 02

  I was on vacation.

• 0:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  Where'd you go?

• 0:41Nilay Patel?

  You look good. You look rested.

• 0:42Speaker 02

  I went to Arizona.

• 0:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 0:44Speaker 02

  But it was like a family vacation. So like, they were like, let's have the day one of the vacation be Vergecast day.

• 0:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 0:52Speaker 02

  And day seven of the vacation be Vergecast day.

• 0:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. You really run into that with those seven day vacations.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 0:59Nilay Patel?

  But it's good. You're, you're rested. Feeling good?

• 1:01Speaker 02

  I feel wonderful.

• 1:02Nilay Patel?

  Ready to have some audible emotions with us?

• 1:04Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:06Nilay Patel?

  The Vergecast.

• 1:06Speaker 02

  I missed it. I missed it. Well, I missed South by Southwest too. So I've been really missing you guys.

• 1:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I've missed you too. Oh, by the way, Ashley Carman's here.

• 1:14Speaker 03

  Hello.

• 1:14Nilay Patel?

  Our very favorite. How's it going, Ash?

• 1:16Speaker 03

  Good.

• 1:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah?

• 1:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:17Nilay Patel?

  What are you up to?

• 1:18Speaker 03

  Reviewing cars, man.

• 1:19Nilay Patel?

  I know. Your screen drive.

• 1:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, screen drive.

• 1:22Nilay Patel?

  For the listener, Ashley has been, you've written two of them now.

• 1:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:25Nilay Patel?

  She's reviewed two cars.

• 1:26Speaker 03

  The Elantra and the new five series.

• 1:28Nilay Patel?

  And the whole point of this series is to pretend that, like, the rest of the car doesn't exist and to just hold the buttons and the screens to the same standard as, like, tablets. And so Ash and I were like, working on it. And I was like, you need to be way meaner to this because it sucks.

• 1:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was too nice.

• 1:44Nilay Patel?

  Because they all suck. But I think that's like, really interesting. I really hope there was some car designer in Munich that was like

• 1:49Speaker 03

  People have reached out. They're very interested in this series.

• 1:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Answer me a thing. We're gonna, we're, single-handedly, Ashley's gonna make the car industry better with technology.

• 1:57Speaker 02

  I think it's, it's a good effort. We just, we put up with so much mediocrity in cars.

• 2:01Nilay Patel?

  Yes. Because, because, because of the thing, because you're like, I'm in a fancy car. It's rolling.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:07Nilay Patel?

  It will protect me from death if I roll it incorrectly.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  The thing that Apple needed to do with the new iPad is just put some wheels on it. And we would forgive everything about it. Just put some wheels on it.

• 2:18Nilay Patel?

  It's an iPad. It's also a car. That'd be great if the last line of your review was like, also, it's a car. I didn't mention that.

• 2:29Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, let's start with Apple. That's a good place to start. So Dieter, do you wanna? I'm just gonna offer you this. It's just, it's just for you, buddy. It's because I love you. Do you want to talk about your review of the iPad? Do you want to start in three words of that review?

• 2:40Speaker 02

  Sure. It's an iPad.

• 2:42Nilay Patel?

  There you go. We're done.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  Knew it. I knew it.

• 2:45Nilay Patel?

  Uh, no, let's start, let's start with the big Apple news and we can talk, because we reviewed a bunch of stuff this week. We'll do that a little bit later. Let's start with like the big crazy Apple. The totally out of character, very oddly disseminated information out of Apple this week.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  New desktop computer who dis?

• 3:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 3:01Speaker 02

  Apple.

• 3:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It was strange. I mean, Paul, you and I have covered Apple together for a long time. Dieter, you and I have covered Apple together for a long time. Ashley, you're new to the crazy.

• 3:13Speaker 03

  I'm new to the crazy. It's true.

• 3:15Nilay Patel?

  This is next level crazy.

• 3:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:18Nilay Patel?

  It's not normal.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  This is the weirdest thing since like they fired Scott Forstall. As far as like Apple, this is how Apple admits its mistakes.

• 3:28Nilay Patel?

  So Scott Forstall they fired during, I believe, Hurricane Sandy. So I was not, I had been evacuated and they put out the press release like while I was cowering in a hotel room, waiting for a hurricane to hit.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Other companies do like Friday news dumps. Apple just waits for a natural disaster. That's how they make these stories.

• 3:46Nilay Patel?

  But that's not what they did here. So what they did here is they called in a bunch of excellent journalists. I don't mean to denigrate them all. They just like hand selected some great journalists. Called them all in Apple, put them all in a room. John Gruber, John Pakowski, Lance Eulof, Ina Fried, Matthew Panzerino.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Matt Penn, yep.

• 4:00Nilay Patel?

  And said, and Panzerino published the entire transcript of this meeting today. So I just read it on Tech.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  By the way, it's gonna be really hard for me to focus because like I, every single. So people read Apple statements. It's like Kremlinology, you know, it's. They, they speak in such a particular way and they've done it for so many years. That reading between the lines of what they're saying is like, there's a whole cottage industry of it. And if you've never been in a room with Apple, I'll just give you like the behind the scenes thing and you can kind of see it here. Like. You will ask them a question, they'll give you an answer. And like in your head, you're like, man, that is really like eloquent and like well thought out and also incredibly carefully parsed.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  And so later on, you will, you know, ask the same question, but in a different way. And they'll give you literally word for word, the exact same sentence like, Apple, Apple executives would make the greatest, like, I don't know, Broadway stars, because they would, they never forget a line.

• 5:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  They never forget a line.

• 5:05Nilay Patel?

  They're good. They're very good.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, so seeing a whole transcript of like, what, as far as I can tell, is a monumental, like, I don't want to say performance, because like, they are genuinely speaking, but like, their ability to like, not say we screwed up, but like have language that approaches it, and keep talking about it for like, a solid hour.

• 5:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  And not like, screw up and like, say something dumb, like, in this very podcast, we're going to talk for a solid hour. And I'm going to say like 15 self-incriminating things that make me look like an idiot. And that never happens with Apple.

• 5:37Nilay Patel?

  I shot a man.

• 5:43Nilay Patel?

  But talk about what it is before we get into the criminology. So, Apple put out the Mac Pro in 2013. Phil Schiller stood on stage and said, can't innovate my ass, which was not in the script. And so like, Apple PR at the time was like, eh, I remember that very clearly. It's, I don't know, I'm assuming our audience knows what a Mac Pro is. It's a cylinder. It, inside the cylinder, there's a triangular core, with GPUs on two sides and CPU on, on the third side. And there's a huge slowly spinning fan on top. And the whole idea was that dual GPUs would be the thing. There's thermally balanced heat, the slow fan pulls everything out at once. And Apple, as I'm sure everyone is aware, believes that external peripherals

• 6:28Nilay Patel?

  over semi proprietary interconnects are the future of all computing. So they thought Thunderbolt 2 expansion would be the thing. None of that panned out. Actually, Paul, I want to hear your take on sort of what's up with GPUs. Because it seems like they made this big bet on AMD parallel GPUs and the whole world is living in Nvidia town now.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, there was a time when like if you were going to go real crazy, you'd do like four GPUs. And that is just not, for whatever reason, I'm not exactly sure why, but the architecture has not worked out for lots of GPUs. And there's hardly anybody's even doing dual GPUs right now. You just don't get a huge performance benefit. So it's mostly about one big GPU. But I mean, the whole problem is that the Mac Pro is a beautiful piece of engineering.

• 7:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  It's absolutely wonderful. The thing is-

• 7:21Nilay Patel?

  We've got them all over this office, all the edit suites in the video studio are Mac Pros.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  There's just fundamental physics that if you want more power, it's going to use more electricity and release more heat.

• 7:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  And the size of the Mac Pro and its layout does amazing job for what it does. But there's just a hard ceiling on how much heat you can basically have-

• 7:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  -in that box. And yeah, the thing is, I don't know all the details and I'm reading this transcript as well right now. But it's really easy for them to fix it.

• 7:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:55Speaker 02

  They could go to Micro Center, buy a tower.

• 7:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:59Speaker 02

  And the other news today, Nvidia just announced a new top of the line graphics card.

• 8:04Nilay Patel?

  Wait, hold on. I feel like we keep on getting sidetracked by how much we want to talk about the thing, but we haven't yet fully said the thing.

• 8:10Speaker 02

  I'm sorry.

• 8:10Nilay Patel?

  So they, anyway, they put out this old Mac Pro in 2013. They haven't touched it in four years. It's been on the market for over a thousand days.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  Well, if they touched it, we'd get fingerprints on it.

• 8:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:22Nilay Patel?

  And there's a lot of question, when the new MacBook Pros came out, there's a lot of consternation from the Pro community. People were mad about the escape key, they're mad about ports, and then everybody noticed, oh, and they haven't touched the Mac Pro at all either. And there was just a lot of questions. And basically what they said in this hour-long conversation was, "We saw a lot of Pros moving to iMacs. We thought that was fine. We didn't really know what to do with the Mac Pro, and then we realized..." Sometime, unclear when they realized that they couldn't do the highest end applications in the Mac Pro in its current design. So they're gonna put out a new modular Mac Pro. They kept on calling it modular. They're gonna put out a new Apple branded display. And they told me when the MacBook Pro came out, Dieter and I were in a briefing and they were showing off the LG 5K displays.

• 9:06Nilay Patel?

  And I said, "Does this mean you guys aren't making displays anymore?" And basically the answer was, "We're gonna leave it to the people who do a better job." And they like gestured toward the LG. And you know, Apple never, it wasn't like a hard answer, but it was like LG's doing better at this than we are. They stopped making or selling the Thunderbolt display, indicating that they had indeed stopped making displays or selling them based on their actions. But now, the LG display had like the most comedy bad problem ever, which is that if it was near a Wi-Fi router, it stopped working, which I don't even know how you get that problem. And so now, Apple's like, "We're gonna make a new Mac Pro, and we're gonna make a new display, we're gonna get back in that game, and it's gonna come out not this year." But they wouldn't confirm next year.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  I mean, it's gotta be next year, right? I feel like them refusing to confirm next year is like...

• 9:55Nilay Patel?

  Panzerino changed the story today because of what you said. They were very, very careful to not actually say next year. All they would say is "not this year," which is insanity to me, because now it's a Paul's point.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  My take on that is like, the idea that Apple would ever give you like actual future information is so anathema to how they work.

• 10:14Nilay Patel?

  I mean, you could say first quarter next year. I mean, there's like, you could say the second half of next year. I mean, there's all kinds of vague, 2018 is a vague amount of time.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  You could just say next year.

• 10:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's a pretty vague amount of time. It's literally, there's a year there for you to fudge the number. But, to Paul's point, you could just go to Micro Center.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:37Nilay Patel?

  Well, you can just build a Hackintosh.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, my roommate has a very old Mac Pro and it's still super powerful because it's a huge box that you can put powerful things inside of. But Nvidia just announced that so this Titan XP is like a super powerful graphics card. It's like $1,200, but it's got basically, except for the amount of RAM it has, it's way faster than their Quadro 6000 or whatever, which is a $5,000 card.

• 11:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  So Nvidia and then AMD is about to come out with Vega. They're saying, they said first half of the year, they really committed and they're starting to push that. The rumor right now is maybe like May, like Computex.

• 11:23Nilay Patel?

  Well, so maybe that's the deal with Apple, right? They're waiting on AMD because they're really locked into AMD as their component supplier.

• 11:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, but they're gonna have stuff this year and the AMD has great, great processors too. I don't know if Apple will use that, but all that to say Nvidia also announced beta Mac drivers.

• 11:39Nilay Patel?

  Huh.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  Which only makes sense right now if you're using external GPU, which hardly anybody does, and it's not.

• 11:46Nilay Patel?

  Or you build a Hackintosh.

• 11:47Speaker 02

  Or you build a Hackintosh.

• 11:48Nilay Patel?

  I like that Nvidia is just like on the sly, like we know what you're doing. We're aware of the situation.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  If Apple's gonna take a year to do this, there's plenty of time for AMD and Nvidia to like try to curry favor. Like, look how sweet and great our drivers are.

• 12:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  Look how good a job we did drivers.

• 12:07Nilay Patel?

  I mean, they're, Apple's AMD all through the line right now, off of the Mac line. I don't think they ship Nvidia anything.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  I don't think they do either. Yeah, that's correct.

• 12:13Nilay Patel?

  But that bet, I mean, the whole point of this is Apple never does stuff like this. And I think the timeline here is just really confusing and weird. Reading the transcript, a lot of, a lot of the questions were like, when did you realize that you screwed up? Cause there's a four-year window of, hey, guys, this isn't working out the way that we thought it was. And they announced that they were gonna build them in the United States. Like, a lot of big decisions had to get made about what this computer, the next version will be and where you're gonna build it. And who's it for and like what GPU to use. When, like, when did they decide? And they were like, you know, there was no meeting and I just keep looking at that line. I'm like. Yeah, there was. There was, you're having a meeting right now about it.

• 12:59Nilay Patel?

  And you had a meeting to plan what you were gonna say.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:01Nilay Patel?

  What, when? Cause it's a year away. Like, it doesn't take eight months to build a Tower PC.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  So Neil, why do you, why do you care so much when, when they made the decision?

• 13:11Nilay Patel?

  I think it reflects like fundamentally a problem in Apple's like structure, like decision-making.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Like maybe they're really disconnected from people?

• 13:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like no one noticed, or they thought that these customers didn't matter and no one is responsible for advocating them or serving their needs. And everyone's so focused on like the phone and like the iPad Pro marketing campaign or like whatever's happening over there. That you could let, you could let a four-year-old bet linger until your most passionate customers are mad at you. So loudly that you're calling a meeting just to say, we're sorry. And sometime, not this year, we're gonna have a new computer. Like, Apple's a computer company. Like, the idea of Apple producing a new computer should not be a surprise that warrants. Right? Like, every computer, like Dell doesn't hold meetings being like, we're putting out a new Inspiron sometime.

• 14:06Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, that's what they're supposed to, that's their organizing principle. So I just think like, this is, this is a sign of the organization not, it's, it's too, they're too matrix, right? They're like a functional group. They don't have like these product owners. That to me is, that's why it's so interesting to me. Like. Craig Federer, whenever it was like, hey, the Mac Pro thing is like, it's not going great. Like, let's just put some new processors in a tower and those people will be happy. Which they could have made, they could have made that decision at any time and it would have worked out great. I don't know, Dieter, do you, do you think it's not that dire?

• 14:37Speaker 01

  No, I mean, like, to me, like, the, the interesting thing about it is that the Mac Pro is a bummer, has been the conventional wisdom. For two years. And, uh, what the hell is going on with the Mac Pro and Apple and the Pro market has like, become like. I don't know, like, uh, existential question, uh, for the last year, or at least since the, the new MacBook Pros came out, when everyone was like, huh.

• 15:05Nilay Patel?

  This is not this. No, this is not what we want.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  So the, for me, the question is like, when did they decide that they needed to do this? And the reason the when matters is, did they not know the conventional wisdom two years ago? And are they just like, are they like whiplash reacting to like the last six months of like concern and angst? Or are they, you know, was this like, has this been the plan for a while, but they waited until the angst got really bad before they told us? You know what I mean?

• 15:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I just, there's a line, I think it's Federighi says in this transcript. You know, I would say we, we start talking about it like six months ago. It's like, six months ago? You could have held this meeting six months ago and been like, not next, you know, like, something about this, the timeline of the decision and then the decision to release this information this way, points to a structural issue inside of Apple that is, I think, very interesting, only because Apple prides itself at seeing around the corner faster. They're like, you don't need headphones. Use these AirPods that Dieter's wearing, right? Like, that's their whole game and they just didn't see around the right corner with the Mac Pro. And it's, that to me is a more interesting thing. Like, I don't, I, I'm using an old MacBook Pro.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  Well, maybe this is a good transition to another corner that they're looking around, which is making their own GPUs?

• 16:27Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah, that's a thing.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:29Nilay Patel?

  And that, what's it, imagination? It's like, basically like, I don't, I don't need you, but I do need your money.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  I was reading the Hacker News comments on this. The patents around GPUs are apparently like, like crazy.

• 16:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  And it's really hard market to get into. Um, so I, I think it'd be interesting, I would love like a Tesla style, like a company to get into, get into the GPU market and then open up its IP so to make the whole market more open. Not, I don't think Apple's gonna do that in any way. Cause there's a lot of room for innovation in, in GPUs. They're like, the CPU kind of keeps on getting more. I just watched this really good Casey Murtory tutorial on how GPUs actually work. But like the CPU basically continues to get more like GPUs with like wide instruction sets and the GPUs get more like CPUs. So like more able to do compute tasks and like

• 17:26Speaker 02

  generic computing. But they're still like on on two ends and there's nothing like really in the middle. There's there's so much room for innovation and like, you know, more like, like imagine something like in an Intel type graphics where you have one set of RAM addressed by both. So you don't have to copy back and forth over a bus. But I don't know, there's there seems to be tons of room for for innovation and and somebody vertically integrated like Apple really has the most chance to shake that up.

• 17:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but they're only going to do it in their phone.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Probably just in their phone.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  For me, the GPU and the iPhone thing is like, oh, do you feel like you have to do that because the off the shelf stuff or the imagination stuff is like not up to what you are actually hoping to do in augmented reality? Like, that to me is what that's about. I do want to go back just just briefly to the Mac Pro and connect it up to the Galaxy S8, which is a weird thing to say.

• 18:22Nilay Patel?

  Interesting.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  For

• 18:23Nilay Patel?

  The new Mac Pro will have a dog butler that listens to your every word.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  There was a period of at least five years where the default assumption about Apple products was that they would be the most beautifully designed and Apple would make really good bets on the specs, the internals of it. And that default assumption was like completely correct, especially when you look at the iPhone. But also when you look at, you know, MacBook Airs and whatever else, they they bet right on high resolution displays. They bet incredibly wildly right on ARM and on like the way that processors on phones and then later tablets should get made. Their phones looked better than everybody else's. Their tablets still look better than everybody else's. And I think one of the reasons this

• 19:07Speaker 01

  Mac Pro thing is so like terrifying to Apple is that default assumption of their infallibility when it comes to product design, both like the guts of it and the look of it, is going away or is now gone, or is it the very least getting challenged? So like, not not a lot of people are super impressed with the touch bar on the MacBook Pro. We think that they screwed up with the Mac Pro and

• 19:36Nilay Patel?

  Well, so do they.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  So do they like and

• 19:40Nilay Patel?

  You know, the iPhone has had the same design for three years. And sure, whatever, it still is a great, you know, phone and we shouldn't want a brand new flashy design every year. But you like they, they have been out designed by Samsung the past two years now. Well, the last, at least they did last year. This year, if Apple's iPhone 10 and iPhone anniversary, whatever the hell you call it, isn't stupendous. I think that it's gonna, the, the default conventional wisdom on Apple and its design prowess when it comes to making products is gonna flip. And I think it's gonna flip really hard and really fast. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. You're wearing AirPods. Actually, I read a post about AirPod stickers. Like, people are like trying to make them not look like that.

• 20:23Speaker 03

  Okay, I just have a question. So, you know, you're talking about how Apple is supposed to see around the corner a little bit, right? And I'm just wondering if like, Apple really just thinks people just want to buy the phones. Everyone's using their phones to like surf the web or whatever, like general consumers, not pros. And you're saying that the pros have stuck around for these past four years. Like, everyone here has a Mac Pro. Like, they're still with it. So maybe this timing isn't actually like, they're upset, they want something new, but Apple's giving it to them. Like, I don't know. It seems like they've stuck through and the customers are still here. Like, no one upgraded to a Windows PC.

• 20:57Nilay Patel?

  I think there's a bunch of people who are more interested in switching to Windows. And I think this is the, you're probably right. Like, the timing is right where Apple sees if they don't do something, they're gonna lose a bunch of customers to the Windows end. Particularly, I think now, actually, you can connect it to what Dieter just said about AR. Like, if that's their next move, they're gonna do all this AR stuff, they, someone needs to make it. And if they don't have products that can help you make AR, which requires a great deal of like, they're just gonna have to do something else, right? And like, I think app developers, like, what do you do on a phone? You run apps and you like, watch videos. The people who make that stuff, you need to give them something to make it with.

• 21:40Nilay Patel?

  You can't make it on iPad yet, at least not to the level that... That you'd want. So I, I think you're right. Like, the timing just ran out. It's just weird that they didn't. It's weird that they're late, right? Like, this is probably the right time.

• 21:52Speaker 03

  They're neglecting this audience. Like, to me, it just seems like they're like, you know what? We're gonna focus on like, the teens and moms who wanna watch YouTube, and who wanna go through their photo albums and make little montages, and, you know, just wanna iMessage their kids.

• 22:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 22:04Speaker 03

  And that's working out great. I can iMessage from my MacBook Air.

• 22:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 22:08Speaker 03

  Like, awesome. And I can watch YouTube videos. Like, not everyone needs to video edit, so maybe they're just like, you know what? We're gonna sit back.

• 22:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 22:16Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 22:17Nilay Patel?

  But that's the thing. Like, they're not, I...

• 22:20Speaker 03

  Again, I'm new to the Apple...

• 22:21Nilay Patel?

  No, no, it's not that. It's like, Apple's supposed to be this scrappy upstart, and now they're acting like the big company that is like, well, we're gonna buy it anyway. Like, that, I think that's what gets me.

• 22:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's totally how I see it.

• 22:32Nilay Patel?

  They're act, they're like, well, you don't have a, like, what? You, do you wanna use Windows?

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 22:37Speaker 03

  That's totally how they're acting.

• 22:38Nilay Patel?

  It's a circle. We made you a fucking circle. Just use it. It's fine. Uh, I don't think they wanna be that company. I don't know. It just makes me, it makes me sad to think of them as being that company.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  If you're working in 3D, which you have to do to do augmented reality, you are on Windows right now.

• 22:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, Palmer Lucky, like, two years ago, is like, I, whatever, like, I can't support it. They don't have a good GPU.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 23:00Nilay Patel?

  Like, that was two years ago. And like, that, if that is indeed the future, then they're, they're gonna have to catch up. And maybe that's like, maybe that was the wake-up. Right? Like, they're working on their big AR plans, and like...

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Somehow, I don't think Palmer Lucky, uh, for a shake the Mac.

• 23:14Nilay Patel?

  I meant like, Apple's working on their big AR plans, 'cause, you know, Tim Cook keeps, keeps talking about it. And like, their own engineers are like, yeah, we're gonna need to build some PCs here, 'cause we can't use our own products. Like, that would suck if you're Apple. You're like, well, can someone place an order for as many Windows PCs as possible? Um, let's move on. Can we beat this horse?

• 23:34Speaker 01

  Uh, we can talk about Clips if you want.

• 23:36Nilay Patel?

  I don't wanna talk about it.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  Lauren, Lauren and Ashley both played with it.

• 23:39Nilay Patel?

  You made a video about Clips. Lauren did like, a little thing.

• 23:41Speaker 03

  I mean, yeah, it's just a video editing app. Uh, it's kinda like, it's basically the in-between of those photo montage, like, things that Apple puts together from your albums and iMovie. And it's all designed to be done from your phone.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  Do you see yourself, like, to me, like, at a fundamental level, the big question with Clips is, do I want to edit a thing and then have to, like, dump it out to another app to post it? Or do I want my funny face video editing app to be built into the social networking app that I'm posting it to? Like, that's a, it's an interesting choice. And it's like a, you just mentioned like, like a mom-friendly choice. Like, it's a really mom-friendly way to design this kind of app.

• 24:21Speaker 03

  It's definitely mom-friendly, but it's funny because I have a friend who works at a coffee shop. And he recently was talking about, like, how he wants to do how-to videos, behind-the-scenes sort of things. And he was doing it on Instagram where you can, like, start and stop your videos. He can walk away for 10 minutes and he would show how to cold brew coffee. And I was telling him about Clips and it's actually, that's like the perfect app for someone like him, who's just like a small brand and wants to show people behind the scenes. Like, it's great for that.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:46Speaker 03

  And that's, that's like, he can make something infinitely better. I'm not saying it's like the best or something, but it's better than your Instagram video that has no music.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:56Speaker 03

  Music is something.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  Music is something.

• 24:58Speaker 03

  Although you're gonna hear, uh, that, this tiki track way too often. Just prepare yourselves. There's something called Tiki Horizon. It's coming for you.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  It's coming. It's coming for your grams. Check it out. We should do an entire story on, like, default Apple sounds that are just part of oral environment. But didn't they, didn't they literally commission, like, Hans Zimmer to make some of this music?

• 25:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, they have some weird soundtracks.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Oh, Hans.

• 25:22Speaker 03

  Something called Mambo Jumbo. Great for a coffee shop how-to.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  Wait, what's your go-to?

• 25:26Speaker 03

  I like Tiki Horizon.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  Who doesn't like Tiki Horizon?

• 25:30Speaker 03

  It's very much my vibe.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. Tiki Horizon and Mambo Jumbo? Like, are they gonna, are they gonna open up a shitty Mexican restaurant? Is that their plan? Or a sick-ass beach bar? Yeah. Woo! What was it? Cocktails. Cocktails.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  We are not going down another Tom Cruise movie rabbit hole. No. People should play with it is what I would say.

• 25:55Nilay Patel?

  Cocktail, I think, taught me everything about.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  No.

• 25:57Nilay Patel?

  Philosophically about selling out. Right? Like, you gotta keep your integrity, man.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  God damn it.

• 26:04Nilay Patel?

  Let's watch.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  But if you're, if you're gonna talk about Tom Cruise movies, I'm gonna go on a four hour, like, fever dream rant about Legend. Okay? So let's just.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  How it's a really good and underappreciated movie?

• 26:17Nilay Patel?

  What was the first movie?

• 26:18Speaker 02

  It's Ridley Scott, right?

• 26:20Nilay Patel?

  I think so.

• 26:21Speaker 02

  It's like the Ridley Scott made a Lord of the Rings movie with Tom Cruise in it.

• 26:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And the unicorn. Right? Can I tell you a really embarrassing story?

• 26:30Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Every day.

• 26:32Nilay Patel?

  Uh, when I was like a, I don't know, 11, I guess, when this movie came out, all the ads were about how it was shot in like ultra widescreen.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  Cocktails are a legend.

• 26:41Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm not. I haven't revealed the movie yet.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 26:43Nilay Patel?

  And I was like a nerd and I was like, man, they like shot it with this crazy cameras and widescreens. So I made my dad take me to see Far and Away. Have you seen this movie? It's not a good movie to go watch with your dad when you're 11.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  And away.

• 26:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman joint. Uh, Tom Cruise leaves Ireland with his landlord's daughter after some trouble with her, according to the hint. That's the worst description of a movie.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  Quote unquote, some trouble with her.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  Howard movie?

• 27:07Nilay Patel?

  A young man leaves Ireland with his landlord's daughter after some trouble with her. That's all it says.

• 27:16Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, let's move on. I'm gonna read this ad for a product. The product is called HelloFresh.

• 27:24Nilay Patel?

  Whether you're a busy professional couple, a large family that runs at a breakneck pace, or someone who simply wants to start cooking more, HelloFresh makes it easier, tastier, and healthier than ever to enjoy the experience of cooking new recipes and eating together at home. From creating recipes and planning the meals to grocery shopping, even delivering all of the pre-measured ingredients, HelloFresh delivers right to your door so you can skip the trick. Skip the trip. So you can skip the trip. HelloFresh delivers right to your door so you can skip the trip. HelloFresh currently offers customers a classic box, a veggie box, or a family box. You can order three, four, or five different meals per week, designed for either two or four people. There's new recipes created every week, so you don't get bored. HelloFresh sources the freshest ingredients, measured to the exact quantities needed, so there's no food waste.

• 28:04Nilay Patel?

  There's two full-time registered dietitians on staff who review every recipe to ensure it's nutritionally balanced. It's all delivered to your door in a special insulated box for free. And they've now got new light meals for spring and breakfast options. Who doesn't love breakfast? So, for $30 off your first week of deliveries, visit hellofresh.com and enter code VERGE30 when you subscribe. That's VERGE30, hellofresh.com. Paul, you've returned.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 28:32Nilay Patel?

  And every week.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  Every week.

• 28:34Nilay Patel?

  You do a segment.

• 28:34Speaker 02

  Even when I'm gone, I do it too. Never missed one.

• 28:38Nilay Patel?

  Never.

• 28:38Speaker 02

  Ever.

• 28:39Nilay Patel?

  We always do it at the same time in the show, and always has the same name.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's called, "Here's a new phone." It's called.

• 28:47Nilay Patel?

  We could've named the entire website that.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  I know.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  Big missed opportunity. So, there's this company out of Korea called Samsung.

• 28:56Nilay Patel?

  Oh yeah.

• 28:57Speaker 02

  It's got a new phone.

• 29:00Nilay Patel?

  Is there a gadget tutorial on the S8?

• 29:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:02Nilay Patel?

  Are you kidding me? No. You cannot do that.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  There's a big one and there's a smaller one.

• 29:07Nilay Patel?

  Go back on vacation, Ashley. Every week you do a segment.

• 29:10Speaker 03

  Yes, so this segment is called, huh, that looks a lot like a bee's hive.

• 29:15Nilay Patel?

  Hey.

• 29:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it is Bang & Olufsen's new modular speaker set called the BioSound Shape.

• 29:24Nilay Patel?

  Oh yeah.

• 29:24Speaker 03

  And it looks like a bee's hive. It's really cool.

• 29:26Nilay Patel?

  Did you say bee's hive?

• 29:27Speaker 03

  Bee's hive, yeah.

• 29:28Nilay Patel?

  Bee hive.

• 29:29Speaker 03

  Bee hive. I think of the bees as owning the hive.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  Like a bee's hive. There's an apostrophe in it. No space, but there's an apostrophe.

• 29:37Nilay Patel?

  Is that like a hairstyle? That's our new cocktail bar, the Bee's Hive. That's great. Come listen to Tiki Marauders mix.

• 29:46Speaker 03

  I like to think of the bees having a home. Okay, Eli?

• 29:50Nilay Patel?

  That's fine. Everyone needs ambition.

• 29:53Speaker 03

  So this is the BO Sound Shape. It costs, for a bass kit, $4,266.

• 30:00Nilay Patel?

  What's in this bass kit?

• 30:01Speaker 01

  Come on!

• 30:02Speaker 03

  It's eight tiles only.

• 30:04Nilay Patel?

  And each tile's a speaker?

• 30:06Speaker 03

  So there's speakers, yeah, speakers, amplifier.

• 30:10Nilay Patel?

  And they're shaped like octagons?

• 30:11Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:11Nilay Patel?

  And you like arrange them.

• 30:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:13Nilay Patel?

  But then you can like make it really big.

• 30:14Speaker 03

  Right, but like...

• 30:15Speaker 01

  And it's supposed to improve...

• 30:17Speaker 03

  That's so expensive. Are you gonna buy...

• 30:18Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's for your upwardly mobile bees.

• 30:22Speaker 03

  Lots of honeybees, pretty sure.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  I think part of it is it's also...

• 30:27Nilay Patel?

  It needs more honey.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Is there such a thing as like dual income, no kid bees?

• 30:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they're just out there.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  They don't, they don't actually have children. They're just out there, living the life in their 30s without kids.

• 30:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  Making, making money.

• 30:41Nilay Patel?

  And they're constantly building ever bigger hives to fill the holes.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  Their bees hive?

• 30:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Anyway, but you're into this thing, or is this just a thing?

• 30:47Speaker 03

  I mean, it's just so cool looking. I could never afford this. I don't know, this is for office buildings, I guess. Maybe someone very fancy wants to spend...

• 30:56Speaker 01

  The sound characteristics of a room, because you're almost like making a wall.

• 30:59Speaker 03

  Well, Vlad checked it out and he was not impressed with the sound. He said it was good, like it's fine. But he's like, this is not for people who are like, you know, Vlad.

• 31:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 31:07Speaker 03

  Who are obsessed with audio.

• 31:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's for bees.

• 31:11Speaker 03

  It's for bees.

• 31:15Nilay Patel?

  Okay, let's talk about YouTube. So, do you have cable?

• 31:18Speaker 01

  No.

• 31:19Nilay Patel?

  Ashley, do you have cable?

• 31:20Speaker 03

  No.

• 31:21Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, I think you cut the cord?

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Uh, I haven't had cable for years.

• 31:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So I'm the last one with cable?

• 31:26Speaker 01

  Twenty of them.

• 31:27Nilay Patel?

  And I'll tell you this story. We were at South by Southwest. It was like the night Mattow was gonna be like, I've got the tax returns. And we all sat around dinner at South by Southwest, desperately trying to figure out how to watch MSNBC.

• 31:40Nilay Patel?

  We all failed. Like, just down the line.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  I thought you had like a sling setup.

• 31:44Nilay Patel?

  I used to have a sling box, but it broke.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Oh, wasn't your sling box at your parents' house?

• 31:49Nilay Patel?

  My sling box was at my parents' house so I could watch Packers games. It was so... But that was like, that was like an ancient hack, like, literally like a coax cable's like coming out of the ground. There are bees everywhere. So all that's broken now, but I have, I have a TiVo that's supposed to have like sling like functionality built into it. That's just, it just has never worked. I think Paul has PlayStation View.

• 32:15Speaker 01

  I had View.

• 32:16Nilay Patel?

  Oh, not Paul. Ross, I got the wrong Miller. Ross has PlayStation View.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  Ross and I, Ross and I both had View fail.

• 32:22Nilay Patel?

  Uh, View fail, like just like down the line. I have, I have pay for cable. I tried to log into MSNBC. That failed. The only thing that worked was Megan found a pirate periscope of somebody pointing at a TV. No, they're pointing at a laptop, rather. So there's a periscope pointed at a laptop and then the laptop started buffering.

• 32:42Nilay Patel?

  So like, just fails all around. So I'm like, well, thinking about that, YouTube comes out with YouTube TV. Ben reviewed it this week. It's got some weird holes in the channel thing, but.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, the channel hole thing is a real problem for me.

• 32:53Nilay Patel?

  They'll, they'll fix it, right? I mean, that's the promise of all these services, but it's 35 bucks a month and it's, it actually works. And as an unlimited DVR, would that convince any of you to buy it?

• 33:04Speaker 01

  If they just improve the channel lineup by like 15%, I'll probably do it. I'm, I'm paying for PlayStation View right now. I never use it. I'm not really happy with it. The unlimited online DVR is actually a really big deal.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, the DVR really stood out to me.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  I do wish that it was also like the, the, the real problem that I have with most of these services is like the actual like on-demand component of this stuff is always really crappy. Like DVR is fine, but like, you know what? Just, you've got it. You've got it available. Just DVR everything for me always, all the time. Like, don't just make it all on.

• 33:40Nilay Patel?

  This is a weird copyright law thing.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  I know.

• 33:44Nilay Patel?

  It's, cause then what, they're not allowed to.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:48Nilay Patel?

  Like I, there's like a real question in my mind, um, why they can't do that. And also, or if they're deduplicating. So if you have YouTube TV and I have YouTube TV and we both decide to record the same show. Do they have to make two separate copies? Very unclear. If they do, that is stupid.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 34:06Nilay Patel?

  Um, but if they don't, then why can't I access your copy later? And like some weird, right? Like if I start a show 10 minutes in, I hit record, like they have a copy.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  Well, that would be me distributing it to you somehow.

• 34:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  Right. And you would think that there's like, oh, like they could do it and like make some reasonable argument about why it's okay to have just one copy of it that they streamed to everybody because they separated it out in some other way. You would think that that's possible, but you'd be dead wrong. And you can just go back and read what happened to Aereo a few years ago. To see just how insane these rules can get.

• 34:45Nilay Patel?

  Well, they, but they.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  I know it's a different situation.

• 34:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Cause YouTube has deals, right? Like Aereo was like circumventing the deals system. And they also had a warehouse full of tiny little antennas that they were very proud of.

• 34:56Speaker 02

  Did it right.

• 34:58Nilay Patel?

  In that they, I mean, they were basically.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  They failed and they got shut down, but that wasn't their bad.

• 35:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but the Aereo's got it wrong because their app didn't work. I had Aereo and it was like not good.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  Worked for me.

• 35:10Nilay Patel?

  Well, Aereo was about as good as Boxy. And I say that with as much promise and hope and failure all mixed into one.

• 35:18Speaker 02

  I, I don't think, you know what the nice thing about YouTube? I, I could imagine myself in a moment of desperation, signing up for YouTube. Because something is so important that I have to see and it's on TV.

• 35:32Nilay Patel?

  That's it. And that's the one you're gonna pick because where, where do you get to watch video on the internet? You go to YouTube.

• 35:37Speaker 02

  I go to YouTube.

• 35:38Nilay Patel?

  And so if YouTube is just like.

• 35:39Speaker 02

  I know the app works and all that.

• 35:42Nilay Patel?

  And you're there and they're just like, push this button.

• 35:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:44Nilay Patel?

  And we're just gonna, but here's a free trial for a month.

• 35:47Speaker 02

  Activate real television. Okay.

• 35:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  Here's what I don't get. Google secretly has the best deal in like uh, online media subscriptions ever. You can get YouTube Red and pull all ads out of YouTube. And uh, Google Play All Access Unlimited, whatever that shit it's called for 10 bucks a month. So you get, you get a, you know, fine music streaming service. And you get rid of all ads on YouTube and you get some crappy YouTube Red shows, I guess, whatever. Um, that is a great deal. None of that, except for the shows that they make that nobody watches is part of this TV bundle and I don't understand why.

• 36:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know. I should have loaded up youtube.com today and had like a huge banner like pay us 20 more dollars a month.

• 36:34Nilay Patel?

  You can only get it in Chicago, LA, New York, Philadelphia.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  Well, I live in New York, Neil.

• 36:39Nilay Patel?

  I know, but like, yeah.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  And Google knows that too.

• 36:42Nilay Patel?

  They know everything.

• 36:43Speaker 02

  And so does Comcast. And so does Paul Ryan.

• 36:49Nilay Patel?

  I don't know if he knows a whole lot. Sorry. He's the representative for my parents.

• 36:55Speaker 02

  But yeah, I did just totally right. Youtube Red is one of the best products.

• 36:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I love it. Are you, do you have Red?

• 37:02Speaker 03

  No.

• 37:02Speaker 02

  I hate Youtube ads so much. At one time, I went through this project, I probably described this before, where I tried to create a targeted ad at myself. Like tried to make a super targeted ad that was like five seconds long. So that I could like, because I had this idea, like you should be able to buy your own eyeballs. You should be able to outbid advertisers who think your time is worth this much. I'm like, well, my thing is more valuable. So I tried to, I could never actually get it to work.

• 37:31Nilay Patel?

  Were you like in the Youtube ad backend?

• 37:33Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  That's a really interesting project.

• 37:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we should do that again, but.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  But maybe with someone that actually understands how to use Youtube.

• 37:41Nilay Patel?

  We, there's a lot of ad people at this company.

• 37:43Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 37:44Nilay Patel?

  They all sit upstairs. I don't know what they do.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  Alright, I'll ride the elevator.

• 37:48Nilay Patel?

  They all have great hair. That's all I know about it. Spectacular hair.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  Seriously, the best hair.

• 37:53Speaker 02

  Well, I'm definitely going up there now.

• 37:54Nilay Patel?

  Whatever happens up there. It's like a salon and an advertising business.

• 38:01Nilay Patel?

  But so here's the other thing about Youtube TV. It's 35 bucks a month, but you sign up for it on a phone, it's 39 because Apple charges the iOS tax.

• 38:09Speaker 01

  If you sign up for it on iPhone, if you sign up for it on Android, you're fine.

• 38:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:13Speaker 02

  Same with Youtube Red.

• 38:15Nilay Patel?

  But I think the most important thing here is.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  It's also not on TVs yet.

• 38:18Nilay Patel?

  Well, I mean, they got to roll out apps. It's not on the Apple TV. I don't think it's on a Roku yet. But when they get it out on the Apple TV, Google will have a much better TV system on the Apple TV than Apple, which I think is crazy.

• 38:31Speaker 02

  I mean, my smart TV is just Chromecast. My Vizio is just Chromecast anyways, so.

• 38:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Alright, man. Does this interest you at all, Ashley?

• 38:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm kind of with Paul. Like, I use my parents' cable. Thank you, parents. But if they ever canceled, honestly, I'm most tempted by this Youtube TV.

• 38:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:49Speaker 03

  Just because, again, it's a familiar interface. I trust Youtube.

• 38:54Speaker 03

  They have Bravo and E.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  They gotta get.

• 38:57Nilay Patel?

  That's what you need.

• 38:57Speaker 03

  Critically important. They do need Comedy Central. And I would like HBO options.

• 39:02Speaker 02

  That's like Hulu's one thing right now. Go to Hulu to watch Rick and Morty.

• 39:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And yeah, I would just DVR everything because I do it on demand. I'm not watching anything live.

• 39:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Does YouTube, I guess I don't know the answer to this question. If you have YouTube TV, can you like, do cable off into other services? That's an interesting question. Probably. Who knows? Tweet at us if you know the answer, random YouTube product manager.

• 39:32Speaker 02

  Why would you do that?

• 39:33Nilay Patel?

  There's all kinds of reasons you do that.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  So that you have one interface to watch all sorts of things?

• 39:37Nilay Patel?

  No, like, you know, you wanna, if you don't have it on demand because you didn't DVR it, you wanna like, log into the SyFy app or whatever and get it from there.

• 39:46Speaker 02

  But then you would just do that? Why would you do it through YouTube?

• 39:50Nilay Patel?

  No, but you need to, you need to pay, you need the TV anywhere. Because YouTube doesn't have on demand. It only has DVR.

• 39:56Speaker 02

  Right.

• 39:56Nilay Patel?

  So like if you need to go and like log into HBO Go.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  Right. What does that have to do with YouTube is what I'm asking.

• 40:03Nilay Patel?

  So if you pay for YouTube TV, can you take the credentials for YouTube TV and then like use them for TV everywhere? Yeah, you know how you steal your parents' cable credentials to do stuff?

• 40:11Speaker 02

  That kinda thing. That makes sense. Oh.

• 40:13Nilay Patel?

  This has been a segment on The Vergecast where we kinda don't know what we're talking about and we don't know the answer. So great radio for everyone. If you're in your car, just turn it down for the next couple of seconds or rewind and then turn it down.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  Also, a big thank you to parents everywhere for sharing their cable credentials with their children.

• 40:30Nilay Patel?

  I have now hit the point with my parents where I'm subsidizing them for things and I'm very irritated about it. That's not how it's supposed to go.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  My parents watch my Netflix.

• 40:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 40:39Speaker 02

  There's one called Paul and there's one called Family.

• 40:43Nilay Patel?

  We, my family shares Netflix and like my brother-in-law passive aggressively switched their credit card back and forth. Whenever it expires. And then I keep on turning on the 4K support and he keeps turning it off because it's on his credit card right now.

• 40:59Nilay Patel?

  But my niece and nephew have discovered that if they don't use their profile and use my profile, my recommendations get ridiculous. So they have started trolling me through Netflix recommendations.

• 41:09Speaker 03

  Your niece and nephew troll you all the time, I feel like.

• 41:12Nilay Patel?

  That's all they do. I wish they would study math. No, that's fine. They're great. I love them. They're gonna be great.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  All gonna be fine.

• 41:21Nilay Patel?

  Everything's gonna be fine. Yes, they're 12 and they've learned to troll and it's wonderful.

• 41:28Nilay Patel?

  This episode of Verge Cast is brought to you by Squarespace. Whatever your next big idea might be, count on Squarespace to help you create an eye-catching online platform that brings it to life. Whether you need a portfolio to showcase your work, a store to sell your products and services, or a blog to share your ideas, Squarespace gives you everything you need to look like an expert right from the start. You can get a unique domain, which strengthens your brand and makes it easier for visitors to find you. Plus, with Squarespace's award-winning templates, creating a beautiful website is simple and intuitive. You can add and arrange your content features with a click of the mouse. There's nothing to install, patch, or upgrade ever. But if you do have a question, Squarespace has award-winning 24/7 customer support that can help you with any problem, no matter how technical or trivial. Think of them as your very own IT department. So, make your

• 42:10Nilay Patel?

  next move. Start your free trial at Squarespace.com today. Enter the offer code VERGE to get 10% off your first purchase. Again, go to Squarespace.com, enter offer code VERGE, V-E-R-G-E, and get 10% off your first purchase. They don't have a tagline today. Squarespace. This week, there's no tagline.

• 42:30Nilay Patel?

  All right, Ashlyn, what do you pick? We've got a whole list here. What do you want to get into?

• 42:34Speaker 03

  Can we talk about the phone reviews?

• 42:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, let's talk about the phone reviews.

• 42:37Speaker 03

  Okay, well, last week, there was a Samsung essay. Obviously, we're all very excited about that.

• 42:42Nilay Patel?

  Paul Schachfeld.

• 42:43Speaker 02

  It's gonna be big, guys. I know it.

• 42:45Speaker 03

  And this week, we have two more Android phones that apparently are not so great. And I'm more just wondering if, like, no one is interested in these phones and if people want that essay.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  So the HTC U Ultra seems like a huge fail.

• 43:00Speaker 03

  According to Dan, who reviewed this.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  It is a monstrous, literally giant-sized fail. It is a huge phone. It is big and doop-dip-dip-doo.

• 43:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's funny in the way that big things are funny, right? Yeah. Cause like, big things are inherently funny. Like Andre the Giant. Like, in that like sad way, right? No, yeah, it's not like tragicomic. This is the answer. Yeah. He's sad a little bit, cause he died young. My god, this is the darkest episode of the purchase, but much like the HTC Ultra. But everybody remembers the thing about the penis. Everyone remembers it, but died young. But also... But this is a sweet color, we all agree. The blue is very sweet. It's nice. No headphone jack, USB-C audio, non-standard USB-C audio. Yeah. Weird proprietary... USB-C audio.

• 43:56Nilay Patel?

  HTC is like, you know, people love that lightning. What if we had our own lightning? Right. But we're HTC. I don't understand any decision on this one. What about this little extra screen? It has a second screen. Yeah, what if we took LG's worst idea from two years ago? I don't know. But Dieter, you reviewed the other one.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the LG G6 is not a bad phone, actually. It's a very good phone with some pretty bad software. Cause I just, I don't know. I've got this whole thing where like, there's like an LG way of doing phones that people apparently like. And I don't understand it at all. It's like, I don't know, it's like Star Trek. It's an interface that somebody loves. And everybody else is like, I don't know what's going on here. But basically, the G6 is like the the cut-rate, less fancy version of the Samsung Galaxy S8. They both have the same core gimmick, which is the screen is super tall and there's almost no bezels or no bezels.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  And that's like the point of the phone. And LG did, I think, a really good job. When I took my SIM card out of the G6, I have a Google Pixel and iPhone 6S. Oh, and a Galaxy S7 Edge. And I like literally put the SIM in all three phones, cause I put it in the first phone, pick up and be like, "Well, this looks stupid. Why is this screen so small?" I put it in the next phone. "Well, this looks stupid." Like, it... Every phone should have a screen that takes up this much of the front of the face of the phone from now on.

• 45:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  It is just way, way better. The stretching thing isn't a problem and yeah, you can complain about the letterboxing on the left and the right if you really want to when you're watching video, but I don't have time for that. Worrying about that. It's just like, you can just see more stuff on the screen without having a gigantic phone.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  And so, good job LG. I mean, the gimmick in my video interview is I gave it a participation award.

• 45:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I love that you bought the ribbon.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  I bought the ribbon because like all the trophies were really bad. I spent like an hour on Amazon, like nobody will know that this is a participation trophy. Like the world's game of participation trophies is gone. The participation ribbon, the box that it came in had a crying child on it.

• 46:16Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Yes, it was amazing.

• 46:18Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  But yeah, like they get, they deserve credit for being in the conversation in 2017, having made a phone. If they had, if they would just have like, like normalized the pricing on this thing and gotten that pricing down to like 650 or 600 even. We'd be having a wildly different conversation about it. The conversation we'd be having is.

• 46:39Nilay Patel?

  If it was a little bit cheaper.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Phone.

• 46:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  You could get an S8, you get the S8 if you want the best one. You get a Google Pixel if you want a good clean Google experience. Or if you don't want to spend that much money, you get the G6. That would, that would be down the line, what everybody would say about Android phones for the next six months. Instead, what we're saying is, hey LG, crackerjack job.

• 47:02Nilay Patel?

  I'm saying that it's $600. I think it'd have to be fought, like you're going to save 120 bucks and not get the best one is like kinda weird.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  That's fair.

• 47:12Nilay Patel?

  Especially when you're kind of like up in that territory. But if it was a $500 phone, I'd be like, yeah, this, this is like the default Android phone if you want the best one.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, we are due at some point for a new OnePlus. That'll be interesting. You know, there's like, there's Android phones every other week, but I don't know, man, I can't get over how bad HTC whiffed the U Ultra. Like, they make the Pixel. They know how to make good phones. They've done it in the past. But it seems like, honestly, ever since the original HTC One with its Ultra Pixel.

• 47:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:44Speaker 01

  They've just been like, just swimming upstream, trying to get people to take them seriously. And every year, they almost get there and then they don't. And it's just like, what are you doing? You know how to do this and you just screw it up every year.

• 48:01Nilay Patel?

  The Ultra Pixel thing to me was, we were talking earlier about Apple seeing it on the corner. Like HTC saw around the corner. They're like, people are going to value low light performance in their cameras. And we're not going to get in the megapixel race. And they just like, crashed. They're like, we see her on the corner and they forgot to like, pay attention to the world around them. I mean, that's like the story of HTC. Like, I don't know. They, I think they're, they should just focus on making Google's phones for them and not worry about anything else that they're doing. Cause they don't have it, I don't know.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  Well, and the Vive.

• 48:38Nilay Patel?

  And the Vive. But Addie wrote a great piece this week on one year of the Vive. She referred to it as the Palm Trio era of VR. Or actually, she quoted somebody who referred to it as that.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  I just want to point out that I am not the person who brought up Palm in the podcast.

• 48:54Nilay Patel?

  Well, I brought it up to see if we could get you on like an hour long digression about the Palm Trio era of VR.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  Do you have any of these phones appeal to you?

• 49:05Speaker 03

  I'm so locked into Apple. But my question was if you guys think the modular thing is just done now? Like, was that a one-off situation for LG? I thought the modular was cool.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  Motorola's gonna stick with it. It looks like Motorola's doing another one. They're gonna make modular phones and dope rap videos.

• 49:24Speaker 03

  That's gonna be it.

• 49:24Nilay Patel?

  So embarrassing, that video.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  Is that modular interesting to you?

• 49:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:30Speaker 02

  What modules do you wish you could?

• 49:33Speaker 03

  I just think it's cool that you could swipe out like to a speaker or a better camera. Like, I don't know. Something about that to me is really interesting.

• 49:41Speaker 02

  Like, I just always feel with modules, if you're carrying that around, you can't just put modules in your pocket, right?

• 49:48Speaker 03

  Well, people carry around those iPhone lenses like we were talking about today.

• 49:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 49:52Speaker 03

  So.

• 49:52Speaker 02

  You could do that, but like, or you could just carry a Bluetooth speaker and a better camera in the bag that you would be putting your modules in, right?

• 50:01Speaker 03

  The module would be smaller, I guess. I mean, I don't know. I just think it's kind of fun that you could swap it out.

• 50:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, it's kind of, but that's like, it's kind of fun is not enough.

• 50:10Speaker 03

  Gonna sell phones.

• 50:12Nilay Patel?

  Here's a good idea. Although, um, Dan loves the Moto phone way more than the Pixel. Like, he's way into the Z play, um, which seems insane to me. I will say that, again, the OLED screen and the Pixel, way too bright. Like, every color is way too bright for me. I'm kind of hoping Apple does not go to OLED with the new phone, but I'm sure.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  The G6 is an LCD.

• 50:34Nilay Patel?

  I know. LG, I mean, LG makes great LCDs. Call them a name with bad software.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  I'll bring it to New York so you can play with it.

• 50:42Nilay Patel?

  I'm excited. Paul, you gonna, what's your situation?

• 50:45Speaker 02

  I have not seen a single thing that any phone manufacturer has done that made me think, gotta get that phone since Gear VR.

• 50:55Speaker 01

  Do not, Paul, honest to God, do not, do not use an S8 or a G6 for more than a day, because after you do, every other screen looks cramped.

• 51:05Speaker 02

  Okay. Well, so, I mean, I appreciate that warning. Maybe you're right. Like, maybe I'm totally missing out and.

• 51:11Nilay Patel?

  Where's your headphone dongle?

• 51:14Speaker 02

  I left my headphones attached to the dongle in Arizona. So I'm on wired earbud status.

• 51:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 51:22Speaker 02

  Which is basically DEFCON worst.

• 51:27Speaker 02

  As far as dog life goes, I'm still making it work.

• 51:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 51:31Speaker 02

  I mean, but yeah, like, all these phones seem to have like some interesting features and like, you know, I like to upgrade my iPhone because I know I'll get better pictures and stuff like that. And, and or I cracked my screen, so I need to upgrade anyways. But yeah, nothing has been like, whoa, new phone is important and different since Gear VR. And I bought that phone and I played with Gear VR for a couple of days and.

• 51:55Nilay Patel?

  Now you're done. Um, I really, really want to switch over to the Pixels, my primary phone. And I'm really, really afraid of leaving all of my friends and family behind. Like, it's just, that's, that's what I know.

• 52:08Speaker 02

  You gotta give them on that new.

• 52:10Nilay Patel?

  Let me, let me tell you something. I'm not getting.

• 52:15Nilay Patel?

  It's not gonna happen. Yeah.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  Your friends and family are not that important. They're, they're not gonna miss you that much and, and you won't miss them.

• 52:23Nilay Patel?

  Says the one person that makes me use WhatsApp.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  Human relationships are overrated. You're, you're, you'd be much happier having just a relationship with your Android phone instead of with other people.

• 52:32Nilay Patel?

  I have always preferred things to people. That's just a fact of my life. That's why, that's why I'm in the technology business.

• 52:40Speaker 02

  Being real.

• 52:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, who doesn't love things?

• 52:45Nilay Patel?

  Who doesn't think the relentless pursuit of things is more important than any?

• 52:48Speaker 02

  I mean, if you're talking about lasting happiness, you're totally right.

• 52:51Nilay Patel?

  It's just things. Just give me more things. Uh, Paul, tell me about Project Scorpio.

• 52:56Speaker 02

  All right.

• 52:57Nilay Patel?

  Which is your new beach bar.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  Here's the difference. What, what's my beach bar?

• 53:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's a great name for a beach bar.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  Waddle me across the beach.

• 53:06Nilay Patel?

  From Tiki Fun, what's the name of the song?

• 53:08Speaker 02

  Tiki Horizon.

• 53:09Nilay Patel?

  Tiki Horizon.

• 53:10Speaker 02

  Tiki Horizon, Bee's Hive.

• 53:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:12Speaker 02

  Bee's Hive.

• 53:13Nilay Patel?

  It's like, where are we gonna rage tonight?

• 53:15Speaker 02

  Project Scorpio is gonna appeal to like local angsty.

• 53:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:20Speaker 02

  Like the angsty locals.

• 53:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:22Speaker 02

  You know? Not just tourists.

• 53:24Nilay Patel?

  It's the real bar.

• 53:25Speaker 02

  It's the real bar.

• 53:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. You have the best industry night on the beach.

• 53:28Speaker 02

  So.

• 53:29Nilay Patel?

  I've really thought about this way too much, right?

• 53:31Speaker 02

  All the.

• 53:36Speaker 02

  Microsoft, basically, there's this guy at Eurogamer that does just amazing in-depth looks at console technology. And so Microsoft basically gave him all the information and he gave the world all the information. But the basic idea is that with the PlayStation 4 Pro, Sony took the chip they had, made it faster, took the GPU they had and made it more, right? But there's basically, it's the same stuff, it's just more and a little bit faster. Scorpio is like a true upgrade. It's in a sense, different architecture and so it has room to be a lot faster.

• 54:15Speaker 01

  But it's not like wildly different architecture though, right? Like it's still using the Jaguar architecture for the CPU.

• 54:21Speaker 02

  Right, but it's like a new model in a sense. It's like not like the new, it's, yeah. Because the thing is with, with console development, it's always hyper-targeted at the actual hardware. You know exactly how many cores you have and how fast they are and everything with a console. And, and so the downside of the, so the upside of this is that there's a lot more room for power. It's like, it's like six teraflops versus four teraflops, but like, there's a lot more power in the Scorpio than the PlayStation 4 Pro. The downside is that there's possibilities for glitches in the games, because if something's hyper-optimized for the Xbox One and this architecture, which is slightly different,

• 55:05Speaker 02

  the game's like, well, I didn't expect that to be there. And so Microsoft is apparently doing the work to go through the whole catalog to make sure everything is going to work completely fine. And, but it also means that, that a lot of games, so PlayStation 4 Pro has this boost mode, so games that haven't been specifically optimized for the PlayStation 4 Pro can still like get like framerate improvements and stuff. Basically, the whole library of Xbox games is getting boost mode in a sense. Like, so there should be like improvements to like everything Xbox One. Like you'll get a more steady framerate, or a lot of games have, man, I really feel bad, because everybody should just watch this Eurogamer thing, because

• 55:48Speaker 02

  I'm just ripping this guy off. But a lot of games have dynamic resolution, so when, like Overwatch does this, like, when it gets really hectic, the resolution is lower so that they can keep the framerate up. Because like, especially shooters, you want to prioritize framerate. So games like that will dip in resolution less often. It's gonna improve basically everything for existing, almost any Xbox One game, or even like Xbox 360 games that run on the Xbox One, should improve in some way. Either framerate steadiness, like staying right at 60 or right at 30,

• 56:28Speaker 02

  or like staying at 1080p instead of bouncing down to 720 or 900. But like, this whole thing was like way less emphasis than Sony did on 4K. So like 4K games will be totally possible. And I'm guessing that will be more of like the stuff that gets optimized. Like stuff, developers going in and tweaking their games to have a 4K mode. And this game, this console will have a lot more headroom than the PlayStation 4 Pro does to be able to do that. So the game should look as good or better on the Xbox One if they have been optimized for it.

• 57:02Nilay Patel?

  So what's the?

• 57:03Speaker 02

  They made a faster console.

• 57:04Nilay Patel?

  But like, all this extra headroom?

• 57:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:07Nilay Patel?

  Is it a decade worth of headroom? Are they just gonna do this again in two years? Like, I guess that's like my big question with these new console cycles.

• 57:15Speaker 02

  I don't know if anybody knows yet if this is the new status quo where they just bump the specs every couple of years. I mean, I think they're gonna wanna have like a big splash, line in the sand generation, I would assume, because that I think is very good for business. But I don't know, Dieter, do you get a vibe that like this is gonna be forever where they're just gonna keep on updating like this?

• 57:37Speaker 01

  Yes, that's exactly what they're gonna do. Until they realize that nobody's bought any more Xboxes.

• 57:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, it just feels like, well, you make the console break so you can like kill backwards compatibility, right? And like, that's not what they're doing now.

• 57:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, Microsoft's not killing backwards compatibility anymore. Like, they have basically through the 360 now.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, they, this was their big thing last year. We, you know, we did a whole bunch of stories in a feature about this. Like, Microsoft is now treating, they're trying to hybridize and change the console markets so that we think of it a little bit more like the PC gaming market where like, there's just a platform, you code your game to the platform and then it will do, look better or worse depending on what your computer is and it will look better or worse depending on what your console is. There's a, there's a very, very real question about whether or not that's actually gonna hold together for more than five years as a strategy. I would, I would like to believe that it would, but to me, like, Microsoft's

• 58:42Speaker 01

  like, big critical problem right now isn't so much is their grand bet on the future of console architectures right or not. Their big problem is that the, they're getting outsold by a huge margin by the PlayStation and the PlayStation is getting all the best games exclusively and they're not coming to the Xbox or they're only coming to the Xbox later. And, and so they just, that is like the bigger, more immediate problem. I actually think their bet on building a console architecture like plan for the next, you know, decade or however long it's gonna be is pretty good. I just think the games are pretty not good and that's a problem for a game console.

• 59:26Speaker 02

  How many PlayStation 4 exclusively, non-first parties that we're talking about? I know Persona 4 was, or Persona 5. What other?

• 59:34Speaker 01

  Was Horizon Zero Dawn on the Xbox?

• 59:36Nilay Patel?

  Of all the times that we need Megan.

• 59:38Speaker 02

  I think you're right.

• 59:39Speaker 01

  There's, I mean, there's also like the network effect, right?

• 59:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:42Speaker 01

  Like, just the general sense that like more people are on the PlayStation.

• 59:45Speaker 02

  You're totally right. Horizon Zero Dawn's PlayStation 4 too, as well.

• 59:48Nilay Patel?

  Andrew and Chris have been writing about this.

• 59:50Speaker 02

  Although it's published by Sony, it's kind of first party.

• 59:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but I mean, but Andrew and Chris have been writing about the fact that like, the Xbox is great, but the PlayStation has better games right now. It's just a thing. I need to buy a PlayStation. And I need to buy a PlayStation VR and I need to leave this reality behind.

• 1:00:05Speaker 02

  Keep thinking about it. PC, dude.

• 1:00:07Nilay Patel?

  You know, if you buy a Playstation, I will literally give you my PS. Why do you have to wait? Until 2018 or 19.

• 1:00:13Speaker 02

  Are you kidding me?

• 1:00:14Nilay Patel?

  For a new powerful Mac.

• 1:00:15Speaker 02

  Oh, because then all the games will be on Mac. Right away, right that second.

• 1:00:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's gonna be awesome. I'm super excited for it. Alright, we need to wrap up the show, but Ashley, I want to give you, tell me what's up. What was the best?

• 1:00:27Speaker 01

  She already had her moment.

• 1:00:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, I wrote about clips, I did my screen drive, I mentioned both. Those were like my big things I did this week.

• 1:00:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I guess for me, it's like, I don't have any moments, so I'm just excited for other people's moments. That's where I live now.

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  No moments?

• 1:00:40Nilay Patel?

  No moments. Well, it's just me and Ajit Pai.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  We haven't asked people to tweet at him about the show for a while.

• 1:00:44Nilay Patel?

  We haven't. You know, if you're listening to this and you'd like to see Chairman Pai and I face off, tweet at him, he's at Ajit Pai FCC. Uh, I've tried to find him on Facebook yesterday.

• 1:00:54Speaker 03

  Did he accept?

• 1:00:55Nilay Patel?

  He hasn't replied yet. Uh, but we have friends in common, so maybe I'll start snaking my way through them. But he did some stuff this week.

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:05Nilay Patel?

  Uh, Verizon leaked out that they're gonna rename AOL and Yahoo Oath, which gives me-

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  Well, no, they're, they clarified that Oath is gonna be the parent division for AOL and Yahoo.

• 1:01:14Nilay Patel?

  But it has been further clarified to me that the Yahoo brands will stay, but AOL's branding is really what's gonna turn into Oath.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:01:23Nilay Patel?

  So the AOL brand is, is gonna recede into the background and it will be Oath.

• 1:01:27Speaker 02

  It's been further clarified to me that You've Got Mail was a great film.

• 1:01:33Nilay Patel?

  Walt, talk to about You've Got Mail on his podcast two weeks ago.

• 1:01:36Speaker 03

  Oh my god, yeah.

• 1:01:37Speaker 02

  Classic.

• 1:01:37Nilay Patel?

  We suggested having a screening.

• 1:01:39Speaker 02

  Aight. You've Got Mail versus Sleepless in Seattle. Ashley, go.

• 1:01:43Speaker 03

  You've Got Mail.

• 1:01:44Speaker 02

  Neelai.

• 1:01:45Nilay Patel?

  Sleepless in Seattle.

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  Dieter.

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  Sleepless in Seattle?

• 1:01:48Nilay Patel?

  Aren't they the same movie?

• 1:01:50Speaker 03

  They're very close to this.

• 1:01:53Speaker 02

  Nah, see, I, I don't know which one I like better.

• 1:01:56Nilay Patel?

  Well, let's just end it there. And next week, tune into the Vergecast next week.

• 1:02:00Speaker 02

  I'll decide by next week.

• 1:02:02Nilay Patel?

  To see which late 90s rom-com Paul has chosen. Anyway, look, this has been, I would say, a good Vergecast.

• 1:02:10Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:10Nilay Patel?

  Paul's back. It was, you know, that I had to get used to his energy in the room, but it's good. We got through it. Just as much as I can say about any of our episodes. But there's so much other stuff to listen to. You can listen to Control Delete. Walt and I went in, actually, on ISP Privacy. Talked about Sonos a bunch. The CEO of Sonos actually just tweeted me because he listened to it. And he said, "Thank you, Walt. We don't agree with you on everything, Neil. So that's great." We talked about Mac stuff on that show, too. Lauren Good, I think, had Tony Rom on Too Embarrassed to Ask. Tony Rom, the great new policy reporter at Recode. They talked about some stuff regarding internet privacy. Kara Swisher hosts Recode Decode, which is wonderful and very vital right now. Peter Kafka hosts Recode Media, which is

• 1:02:54Nilay Patel?

  my very favorite because I'm a big media nerd. So listen to all of that stuff. iTunes.com/theverge. You know, rate it in iTunes. Just go through that emotional journey of using that software. That'll be good for you. Builds character. And then you can tweet at us. We love that. Ashley? Ashley R. Carmen. Paul?

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  Future Paul.

• 1:03:15Nilay Patel?

  Dieter?

• 1:03:15Speaker 02

  Also on Mastodon.

• 1:03:19Nilay Patel?

  Dieter?

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  Which instance, though, Paul?

• 1:03:21Speaker 02

  XYZ.

• 1:03:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm on Mastodon dot XYZ as well. I'm back on there and also on Twitter.

• 1:03:26Nilay Patel?

  I'm on a WooSpace, which is just the craziest.

• 1:03:30Speaker 02

  A WooSpace?

• 1:03:31Nilay Patel?

  A Woo dot space. I'm at Reckless.

• 1:03:34Speaker 02

  Is that a Mastodon?

• 1:03:35Nilay Patel?

  It's a Mastodon instance. It's for furies. I don't know what else to say to you. It's for furies.

• 1:03:45Nilay Patel?

  But it's great. It's a safe space for furies, all right? That's my new social network of choice. But I love it. I think Mastodon's very interesting and we'll probably be on soon. What, a WooSpace? Evan Rogers is there with me. He's my only a WooSpace friend. But I think Casey's on that. Look, just get on the Mastodon. I'm not even gonna tell you what it is. It's a new hot underground social network. And I'm at Reckless on Twitter, which is not the new hot social network. That's the one with the Nazi eggs.

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  Although Twitter fighting the US government, they, just before we started recording, they filed a lawsuit to not have to reveal the identity of one of their users. So good job.

• 1:04:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, good for them. Anyway, that was the Vergecast. Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back next week. I'm told I don't have to thank a sponsor at the end, but just shout out to Crizal, because you know you love her.

• 1:04:34Nilay Patel?

  That's what you get. Alright, that's it. Rock and roll. Paul. Snip, snip.