New Gmail, Spectacles 2.0, and iPhone SE 2?

This week on The Vergecast, Dieter, Natt, and Paul are still without Nilay but there’s a whole lot to talk about. Google made some changes with Gmail — which is now live, and Snap surprised us this week with their new edition of Spectacles — but what makes them different from the original model? Also, there’s a whole bunch of Amazon news and rumors this week, including an Echo Dot for your child. There’s even a whole lot more in between that — like the segment Paul does every week (say it with me) “I’ve carved this for you out of aluminum” — so listen if you listen to this whole episode of The Vergecast, you’ll be all up to date with the tech news of the week and won’t have to worry about much else the rest of your weekend. 01:20 - Gmail’s biggest redesign is now live 09:49 - Google is finally making a standalone Tasks app 16:38 - Snap’s second-generation Spectacles are more grown up — and more expensive 28:05 - Amazon will now deliver packages to the trunk of your car 32:33 - Amazon’s new Echo Dot Kids Edition comes with a colorful case and parental controls 37:04 - Amazon is reportedly working on its first home robot 40:29 - Amazon teases upcoming Fire TV Cube 43:41 - Paul’s weekly segment “I’ve carved this for you out of aluminum” 45:53 - Dieter essential phone feels 47:47 - There are a ton of sketchy rumors about an upcoming iPhone SE 2 50:44 - The OnePlus 6 is coming on May 16th 52:56 - Spotify launches a redesigned app with on-demand playlists for free users Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode of The Vergecast is brought to you by IBM. Did you know 16 million new collar jobs will be created by 2024? To help fill them, IBM's new education model gives high school students workplace experience and an associate's degree. 90 Ptech schools are already preparing graduates for tomorrow's STEM careers. Let's put smart to work. Find out more at ibm.com/ptech.

• 0:27Speaker 00

  Hello and welcome to another episode of The Vergecast wherein I start out by saying greetings, mobile accomplishers, and note that it is week three without Herr Patel. Rations are running low. Hi Nat.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  There's just nobody around. Nat, I love you, but you don't talk about boats enough. You don't talk about the love of the sea.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  I'm so sorry.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  You don't pick fights with Ezra Klein. It's just not the same.

• 0:56Speaker 02

  I'm so sorry. I'll make sure to gain a personality or download one by next week.

• 1:00Speaker 00

  Oh, my God. Paul, you also heard his voice. Hello. He is on a boat. No? We are the flagship podcast. Every episode starts coherently, smoothly. Yep. The rapport is just the best.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  We really try.

• 1:15Speaker 00

  Oh, my God. Lot of news, actually. I was thinking that it was not a big news week, but there's been a bunch of stuff going on. I think, obviously, we have to start with the new Gmail.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25Speaker 00

  I know, Nat, you did a video on this. Tell me, tell me what you think.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  OK, so overview of the new Gmail. Couple of weeks ago, we got a leak. We all saw that some sort of new Gmail is coming. And then, you know, this week came around and all of a sudden it just showed up, which is surprising for a lot of people. And I think a lot of people also freaked out and were like, how do I get this Gmail? But if you have it already, if you haven't, just click your settings cog and see if it's there. If it's there, it's going to tell you that you can try it. But if you have it, it's a lot more white space. There is now collapsible toolbars on the left and the right side. The compose button is massive. The right toolbar now has a bunch of different icons that you can use to look at your calendar side by side to your emails. There's keep, there's tasks. You can drag stuff into tasks to build stuff out of your calendar and just kind of work

• 2:12Speaker 02

  as a dashboard for your, basically, your life or whatever you use Gmail to plan. It's a lot. It's really, I personally find it super busy looking and A little hard to look at because there's just so much stuff. But I don't know. What do you guys think?

• 2:27Speaker 01

  It does feel like a dashboard for your whole life. I can conceive of somebody opening the Gmail tab when they get to work and not leaving that tab.

• 2:36Speaker 02

  But you know how like, you know like how like back in the day, I feel like when you were younger and you went online, the first website that you probably opened up was like Facebook. And that's your dashboard for your life because your friends are all there. Then you decided that Facebook is evil and somehow Google is not. So now Gmail is your dashboard. You wake up and the first thing you open is Gmail. And it has all the emails or the stuff you're interested in because maybe you subscribe to content there. Maybe you have emails from your family members or your friends. And then you also have now your calendar and the things that you're going to do for the day and the things you have to do later because you added to your Google Keep or Task.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  That's Google though.

• 3:12Speaker 00

  There's so many things about that that make me happy and also sad.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  It's reality though.

• 3:17Speaker 00

  You didn't just say AOL was the first thing that you opened when you got your computer when you were young. Because that was definitely the first thing I opened on my computer when I was young. Well, first it was a BBS. So A, I'm old. B, it makes me happy to know that you are approaching being as equally old as I am. Because the first thing people open isn't a website anymore. It's, you know, I don't know, Snapchat or Instagram on their phone.

• 3:39Speaker 02

  I mean, that's true. I'm saying, yeah, I think you're right. I think on your phone, people definitely still open apps, like social media apps in particular first. But I think when you open up a laptop, the first thing you probably want to look at is your email. At least I do.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  I just don't read email.

• 3:52Speaker 00

  So it's explained so much.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  So Google created Inbox and I was very excited. Because Inbox is kind of a one dimensional way to go through your email. You are, you are going forward through it. And sometimes you snooze something, sometimes you archive something, sometimes you, you ban something from ever being seen again. Sometimes you even read it. But you're going through your inbox and now in Gmail, it's like you're never going to be done. You're just going to live here, which it makes a lot of sense. It seems really useful for a productive person. And I do think Tom did a piece on how Google's kind of going after Microsoft and Outlook

• 4:38Speaker 01

  and sort of this integrated business suite of apps. And Google is way behind, which is, I guess that was kind of surprising to me.

• 4:46Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, they're super far behind, especially among business users.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  It is pretty genius, or maybe just the most obvious thing in the world to put your calendar next to your email.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 4:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, I've been, that's one of the reasons I like use Mailplane on the Mac is it's a, you know, it's one of these web app container things. It's not Electron though, that maybe it's switched to Electron. Anyway, it's great because I just have a calendar tab next to my email. So I might need, not need that calendar tab anymore. You know, the funny thing in Vlad's story about this, we actually have got the most direction I've seen about what's going on with inbox than we've got, than I've been forever. Like, the joke is that they never seem to update it for the iPhone. David Pierce over Wired said that they didn't because they like had to figure out the swipe interaction model, fine. But this product manager for Gmail said that inbox is the next gen early adopter version, whereas Gmail is the flagship that will eventually get the best new features.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  That sounds like a great idea, but that's not what it is right now.

• 5:43Speaker 00

  Inbox is, like, they threw a bunch of stuff in it and then they, I don't know, they barely updated it, man. Like, they didn't do much to it. I was really hyped for inbox for a while, but I eventually, I don't know, I got tired of the the app layout on it and I just sort of let it go and went back to Gmail. So I'm really happy snoozing came to Gmail. Don't know how I feel about using B as the shortcut, the keyboard shortcut for snoozing, but that's a different story, I guess. I don't know, I think this is good. I think it'll, it'll help with business users. It'll, it definitely makes it feel more modern to me. Like, I immediately dug into Gmail's settings and made it look like my old Gmail, though. Like, I don't have the little attachment things. I don't have, I just, I just want the simple list.

• 6:25Speaker 02

  Hate, I personally don't love default view. Like, I don't want to see all the files inline. I don't want, like, it's so overwhelming, as is, that you show up and you see all these different attachments and then like, everything is like, not uniformed. I don't know, like, sends my OCD to like, hyper level where I'm just like, oh my God, does this seem much?

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Well, it makes it harder to scan, right? If it's thing, if that list, what we're referring to is the view for an email can also show that there's like attachments of certain file types.

• 6:54Speaker 02

  And it's supposed to be a shortcut so that you can click it and just see the lightbox view of it instead of going to the email and then clicking the attachment. But then there's now all these different icons and colors and like file names and it's just like, it's too much.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  And it makes a message line be a different height than all the other ones.

• 7:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  Messy.

• 7:13Speaker 00

  I'm, I rejected their attempt to like add tabs to the interface where there's like main and like promos and newsletters and blah, blah, blah. Like, nope, don't, don't want any of that crap. I will handle all that on my own. Just give me the list of my emails in my inbox. Leave me alone.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. Also, interesting is on the lower left side, they still have Hangouts in there, which I don't know what that's about. Like, sure.

• 7:33Speaker 00

  It's Hangouts Chat.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  Okay. Okay.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  Wait, Google, Google is end of life-ing Hangouts.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  And yet it's still in this new Gmail.

• 7:42Speaker 00

  No, they're not.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:44Speaker 00

  They're changing it to Hangouts Chat.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Please explain this to me, because I'm a G Suite administrator, because I have my own domain name that I host Gmail on, and I upgraded to the paid version so I could use the new Gmail to check it out. And they're, they're saying like, in like the next like month or two, like Hangouts is, is, is going away and we're moving everybody over to Meet. Oh, by the way, Meet still doesn't work in Safari or Internet Explorer. We won't absolutely kill Hangouts until Meet works and, and those.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  Which is probably some WebRTC thing.

• 8:18Speaker 00

  Hangouts is getting replaced with Hangouts Chat, which is their Slack competitor. It will still sort of work. It'll still be compatible with Hangouts in Gmail, although eventually we'll have to see what, what happens to that little widget inside Gmail. There's also another product called Hangouts Meet, which is their video conferencing solution, which again, yes, is based on our WebRTC, although they made a new version of it that is like better and whatever. And that's one of the reasons it doesn't work in Safari. Safari doesn't have great WebRTC support, at least not the way that Google implements it. And so they have Chat, which is the Android, the RCS thing, which will work on Android phones. And they'll be a web client. And then there's Hangouts Chat, which is compatible with Hangouts.

• 9:00Speaker 00

  But eventually, everybody who uses Hangouts is going to need to move over to Hangouts Chat, which costs money. And so if you're a regular Gmail user who uses Hangouts, your future into a free version of Hangouts Chat is up in the air. It is unclear what that plan is.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 9:18Speaker 00

  Is my best understanding of it.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  Okay, so how about this? Bring back AIM. I think it's time.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Oh, this is your chance. I'm looking at you. This is your chance.

• 9:31Speaker 00

  Oh, man. That's a great idea.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  I would switch back to AIM.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  I feel like if I'm listening to this podcast right now in the car on the drive home, I would just like rage, like, off into the sun, just because like, everything that you just said, Dieter, and also like the idea of AWOL coming back, or AIM coming back, I was just like, oh, my God, I can't.

• 9:49Speaker 00

  So we haven't even talked about the thing I'm most excited about, which is Google Tasks.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I mentioned it a little bit, but I think that you are loving it.

• 9:57Speaker 00

  I don't know that I love it.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  I mean, you love that they're like paying attention to it.

• 10:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. So the previously, there were like 15 different places to enter a task, and they're finally like have a single view, or you can go look at it without having to do some weird hacky workaround. There's a bunch of people up on my Twitter mentioned saying, technically, if you go to tasks.google.com/canvas/ something, something, you kind of like, okay, whatever. So it's there in sidebar. They'll make a standalone thing for it. I think the next step is they need to figure out how to integrate it with like the reminders that you put in Google Assistant, but you can drag emails into it. I'm just, it's not a full-featured to-do app. It doesn't do a million things that I kind of wanted to do app to do. Like, you can't set a specific time on it. You can only set a date. But you can drag emails into it, and there's apps for it. So if you just want a really simple, dead-ahead to-do list app,

• 10:44Speaker 00

  Google finally, finally does it. I mean, look, when the original Palm Pilot, there's your Palm mentioned for the day, came out in 1997, it had four buttons on it.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay, wait, wait, wait.

• 10:56Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  I'm guessing one of them was for tasks.

• 10:59Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  Calendar?

• 11:03Speaker 00

  Yup.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Contacts?

• 11:04Speaker 00

  Yup.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Memo?

• 11:05Speaker 00

  Memo, yup.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 11:06Speaker 00

  Back in the day, I used to call those, I had this, I had this whole thing, I had this whole like prepackaged rant that I could trot out whenever I wanted. I'm so bad. I called it the four pillars of PIM, which PIM is a personal information management. If you're gonna make an Office suite, you need to offer those four apps and they need to be integrated into each other.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:26Speaker 00

  Microsoft figured this out with Office, a long time ago, Outlook is does, and then there's OneNote and then there's, you know, Calendar, Outlook Calendar and blah blah blah, like, they figured that out. And it took Google this long to figure out that, oh yeah, people might actually need to like, make a list and check things off of it. And not want to have it be buried away inside random notes in their memos app.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Why should I trust that Google won't forget that it made a task?

• 11:50Speaker 00

  You shouldn't trust Google for anything, ever. Have you guys looked at the, the Tasks app on Android phone or iPhone?

• 11:57Speaker 02

  Um, I think it's a great, this sounds like a, maybe less unconventional than I think, but I, I would totally use it for grocery shopping, just because it's like way fast. Just check everything off the list and like, not actually a task per se, but more like just the list. And I enjoy that. It's clean, it's easy. I can type it in, you know, just look at that later on my phone. Works, works great.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  I've gone to Plain Text for keeping tasks.

• 12:25Speaker 00

  Wow. I don't really like, if you wanna like, you don't, don't you like checkboxes though? Isn't it satisfying to like tap a box?

• 12:31Speaker 01

  It would be satisfying, but what's not satisfying is, I want my tasks very close to my notes. And my notes, I want them to be kind of in my cloud, not in someone else's cloud.

• 12:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Like I use Simple Note as a synchronization service, but I feel like I own my notes and I wouldn't feel like I own notes if they were in Google's system.

• 12:51Speaker 00

  So I use Simple Note as a synchronization tool and then when I'm on my Mac, I make sure that I use NVAlt, which is a Simple Note app. And what's great about NVAlt is you can go into the settings and tick a box to have it save every single thing in Simple Note and Plain Text on your Dropbox.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:07Speaker 00

  So you always have a text file backup. But no, the reason I brought up the to do app, one, Google caught a lot of flack for like, it's like completely incoherent font strategy in that app. They're like using different fonts in different places and there's no rhyme or reason to it. But two, if you notice, there's no drawer, there's no sidebar on the left-hand side. Like there isn't a lot of Google apps. Instead, it's this thing that pops up from the bottom, which is kind of like how Google Maps work. And my conspiracy theory is that Google is getting ready to have a gesture on the left-hand side of the screen that acts as back in the same way that the iPhone does. Because there's this other, these other Android P rumors where there was like that little pill next to a back button. And maybe they'll do a swipe up to go to multitasking in the way, the same way the iPhone does.

• 13:51Speaker 00

  And if they want to get rid of those button bars, they could switch to the iPhone style of gestures. And if they're gonna do that, they need to get rid of the left-hand drawer, because if sliding over from the left opens the drawer, but if they need that to be back, then they've got to like change every Google app to have this drawer on the bottom thing. I don't know. This is definitely taking it too far, but they are doing this interaction model of the drawer on the bottom instead of on the side. That's like definitely a theme.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Okay. Here's the thing, Dieter. You didn't take it far enough. How does the drawer in the bottom relate to the Fuchsia UI?

• 14:26Speaker 00

  Ooh.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  Right? Because they have these sort of narratives of chained together tasks and cards and decks and all sorts of webless elements.

• 14:42Speaker 00

  Uh, yeah. I like it. If they can fix the font in coherence, then I think that the Tasks app is a pretty good indication of the design direction of what Google's doing. There's like a lot of hints in there. I think 95 Mac maybe even did a story about Material Design 2. I don't think they're to call it Material Design anymore. I think they're like... That was a nice experiment that like got everybody on the same page, but now they're sort of letting people be a little bit freer. I don't know. What else is there to say? I like that it works in Safari for once. Like, Google released a web app that isn't Chrome only. Good job, guys. Congratulations. Just saying.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's kind of too bad that the confidential mode is not out, at least not for me. I think some people maybe have it, but it's not for me yet. And I would be super curious to see how that works in practice, just because that is the newest thing that I've seen. Basically, what you, what happens is when you make, compose an email, there's now going to be a button that lets you make a message expire at some amount of time, or you can even unsend it, which is crazy. Some apps obviously let you do this. I think WhatsApp has allowed unsending for some while. Instagram Direct has like an unsend-ish kind of tool. But yeah, like, I have no idea how that's working in practice. Like, does it tell you that you've revoked privileges? No idea. It doesn't say. So I would love to be able to use this more to kind of figure out how that actually works.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  I think the underlying thing is you're basically sending someone a link to a piece of content, and you can kind of delete that piece of content later in time. I'm sure that, I haven't looked into it, I'm sure that Gmail can just make it all look like an email.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm curious.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, but what happens if you use a third-party client?

• 16:14Speaker 01

  Then you just get a link.

• 16:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's kind of sucks.

• 16:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, we'll see.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  Well, what do you expect from a company that owns everybody's email account? They're going to play nice.

• 16:24Speaker 00

  Are you trying to goad me into talking about email standards and then as a way to talk about web standards? I bet you that those, I bet you those embedded, expiring emails are basically just AMP pages inside, inside your Gmail.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  I hope so.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  I have no way to segue to this, so I'm just gonna do it. Spectacles 2.0. Huge surprise. New version of Snap Spectacles.

• 16:46Speaker 02

  They're still doing it.

• 16:47Speaker 00

  They're doing it. They're still making them. I don't know. I haven't tried them. I'm not compelled by them. I don't know, Nat, you've tried them, right?

• 16:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, very briefly. So Casey Newen did the story on it, and he was in town in New York to check, um, check it out. And I saw it, and it is the first time. So this may come as a surprise to you, Dieter, but I am a 20-something who's never used Snapchat before. So...

• 17:11Speaker 02

  Yesterday was the first time I used Snapchat in my entire life because I went up to Casey. Yes, I went up to Casey.

• 17:17Speaker 00

  Tell me everything.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  Well, I went up to Casey and I said, can I check out the spectacles? And he's like, sure. I took them, I put them on my face and I was like, okay, what do I do? And he's like, well, first you have the Snapchat app. And I said, no. And he said, you should do that first. So I downloaded Snapchat. It was, the signup process is not, like, they still do that same thing they do like with most apps where like skipping, syncing your contact is like, the word skip is written on like a very light gray font on top of a white background. It's hidden on the top corner. So I'm like, I see you Snapchat, I see you. So I pressed skipped and I finally got into the Snapchat app and then I tried it. So the thing about this spectacle.

• 17:59Speaker 00

  Sorry, I need, I need, I need way more detail. Did you understand how to use the Snapchat app? Because it has, it used to be wildly confusing. Now it's just mildly confusing, but I also don't know, because I have used every iteration, whether, I just, I'm like used to their crazy way of thinking. Like, when you open this app for the first time in your life, this is amazing. Like, what was it like?

• 18:20Speaker 02

  Well, it turned the app on. You know, it had that camera screen. You can tell how to take the photo because there's the circle on the bottom. I didn't really send a picture because all I wanted to know is how to use spectacles. So, but you know, I can tell there's a button underneath the camera shot, shooting like button that shows you that all the pictures or like videos that you've taken. But I assume that's, that's gotta be it. Then you take the picture that you want to send and just pick someone to send it to? I'm guessing that's how you do it. I didn't actually send it to anyone.

• 18:49Speaker 00

  This is amazing, you send something to you.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  Oh, God. I didn't get that far.

• 18:54Speaker 00

  How do you add a filter? How do you zoom in?

• 18:56Speaker 02

  Oh, um, there was a point where I opened up one of the videos that I shot with the new spectacles 2.0. And there was a scissor button that I thought was like for trimming the video clip. And it's not. It's for, the scissor thing lets you select some part of the video that then you cut and then like just becomes a sticker that just floats in your video, which was extremely creepy because I happened to. Cut out a piece of like someone's head and just sitting far away in the office. And then I looked at it again and this head was just like floating all over the video. And I was like, oh my god, what is going on here? But new spectacles is, I didn't use, obviously, the first spectacles, but I saw them side by side.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  It's a lot thinner. It looks like a real sunglasses. I think that, you know, it kind of reminds me of some of the free plastic sunglasses that you get at like parties and like concerts that they like to give out.

• 19:51Speaker 00

  Ooh.

• 19:51Speaker 02

  It's flashy.

• 19:52Speaker 00

  That is hard.

• 19:54Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 19:54Speaker 00

  They're supposed to be like higher quality than that.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  It is higher quality, but I think like the.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Are you mean aesthetically or materials wise?

• 20:00Speaker 02

  Aesthetically, aesthetically. Because I think like the flashy colors, like the bright, you know, like it's got this like reflective lens. That's like a mirror kind of look to it. So it reminds you of that. Like it's very like, I just partied at Coachella kind of thing.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  They're not designed to blend in.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're not, they definitely are designed to stand out and they look, you know, hip. They definitely are targeted for someone younger. Yeah. Like even I feel a little odd wearing it and also I just don't really enjoy sunglasses in general. But, um, but yeah, it's lighter. It feels like a real sunglasses. There's a little button on the left side that lets you, you know, hold it to take a video. If you hold it longer, it now takes a photo, which I believe is a new part of it. You can take a photo before. Quality is better than the old one. Um, it does look quite nice. It's still that spherical thing and you can flip your phone when you look at the picture. And I think syncing is supposed to be faster now, although I've never used it.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  And when I was trying to sync up the video that I took, it's still, I was like literally just counting with my finger like one, two, three, four, five. And oh, there you go. The video is in my.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  10 second video?

• 21:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I was like, wow, this takes a while. And Casey was like, yeah, you'd be surprised how much longer it took on the first one. I'm like, what?

• 21:17Speaker 01

  So, so the key improvement is that they're lighter, the, it transfers faster, it's waterproof.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  But the key.

• 21:25Speaker 00

  They're thinner, too.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  Or, okay.

• 21:28Speaker 00

  Like, when you fold them up. Yeah, yeah.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  But the key question to me is, were spectacles ever a good idea? And they just had some execution flaws, which these are, this is solving? Or was it just not a good idea in the first place?

• 21:40Speaker 02

  Look, I think the idea of a wearable camera is not new. Like, you see GoPros, and I think that people are very excited by GoPros, because it's, you know, you wear it, it captures all the adventurous stuff that you see or are doing. I think that Snapchat trying to go into that market is smart. I think it's cool. Um, is it executed in a way that I think it's going to be a mass market? I'm not quite sure. Because, just because also spherical video that only works for Snapchat is not very easy to share.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was one of, I, I don't know what it was about it. Today, I guess I've been thinking a lot about, like, open standards and.

• 22:14Speaker 00

  Damn it, Paul.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  I just, I just like Snap, you know, Snapchat, one way Snapchat could differentiate itself is by creating a product that just like, doesn't. We don't need Snapchat to be another Apple, uh, that's making something that's completely vertically-integrated. I mean, it makes sense that it would work the best with their service, but the, the idea that it's so intrinsically tied to its service and it, and it shoots photos in like, a weird kind of useless format?

• 22:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I, I will tell you that, like, spherical format is cool, but I don't see any, like, value in it at all. Like, it doesn't make me want to share it. Otherwise, like, it, don't think that, like, I think I can send it to my friends on Snapchat, and they're gonna be like, "Oh, my God, let me flip my phone around and look at this."

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Imagine, like.

• 23:00Speaker 00

  Oh, but it is super cool. When, when, in Snapchat, the spherical, the, the round thing, and you can, like, move the phone around a little bit to, like, peek around the corners of it, that is actually genuinely fun.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  That is, yeah, I think that, that is cool, but I think that, for me, it seems like a novelty that just kind of, meh.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  Okay, imagine, imagine the coolest thing that's ever happened to you happens in front of your face, and you happen to be wearing spectacles. This is Snapchat's best-case scenario, right? You don't have time to pull out a camera, you just reach up and click the button a few times, you get a 30-second video of the craziest thing that's happened to you. In a format that is going to be complete, you know what I mean? Like, you're not, you're not gonna say 10 years from now, oh, thank goodness that I got a circle video of the craziest thing that's ever happened to me in my life.

• 23:52Speaker 02

  That I can only watch with this one app.

• 23:54Speaker 00

  That fundamentally is not what their best case scenario is. They don't want, they, they don't think that this is for making, you know, a life, lifetime of memories that you're gonna open up in your, whatever the equivalent of a photo album is, and you're gonna like, show naked pictures of your child to their, you know.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  Why are you wearing your sunglasses in front of your naked child?

• 24:14Speaker 00

  When you're bathing your baby, if you're bathing your baby.

• 24:16Speaker 02

  And you're wearing your sunglasses in your house bathing your child?

• 24:19Speaker 01

  Okay, let's, let's move to. Baby's first steps, baby's first steps.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  And that's better, okay.

• 24:24Speaker 00

  But no, you always like, whatever, baby's first step.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  God.

• 24:30Speaker 00

  All I'm saying is everyone's had the moment when you bring somebody home for the first time to meet your parents, and then your parents break out the photo album and make fun, and like, tease you with embarrassing photos from your childhood.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 24:40Speaker 00

  That was, that was the whole point there.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Absolutely, okay, absolutely.

• 24:43Speaker 00

  I think that that is as close to like, a lifetime of memories kind of pictures that they, that I think Snapchat actually wants to do with this. They, what they actually want isn't like, record this amazing moment for posterity. What they actually want is, send a weird funny video to your friends that feels like there's a lower barrier to entry, that it doesn't have to be perfect, because it's just a thing you recorded on your glasses.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  In that case, the next Snapchat thing, or hardware that they should make, if they ever make one, is like, one of those picture frames that you can give to your grandparents, and you can just like, shoot the video over to them. You know like those picture frames where you can like, upload videos and photos? Like, the next Snapchat thing should be a picture frame where you can just shoot the message or video or photo over with your spectacles, and your grandparents will be at home being like, oh, look at my beautiful grandchild, in this like, and then, you know, they can pick it up and do the weird flippy three, you know, like, spherical viewing.

• 25:40Speaker 00

  This is.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  You're a genius and Snap should hire you right now. And they should make that, because think about that. That's the thing that you get for your grandparents when you graduate high school. Or like that, like when you get them for Christmas.

• 25:53Speaker 02

  And if Snapchat is so adamant on making sure that they are the platform that you can view this content on, then like the next thing should be like another hardware where like you can actually view it on, but in a way that's not tied to your phone or easier for people of all ages to use. Who knows?

• 26:10Speaker 00

  I like it.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  Well, we've solved all of Snap's problems. Next year, they definitely won't lose around $800 million.

• 26:19Speaker 02

  Or just have like 100,000 million spectacles sitting in some warehouse collecting dust. Which, by the way, they said they recycled parts to use for 2.0, so there's not, it's not all lost there.

• 26:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, I wonder what parts.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've been wondering which parts too.

• 26:33Speaker 02

  Me too. Hard to say.

• 26:37Speaker 00

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• 27:19Speaker 00

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• 28:04Speaker 00

  Uh, Amazon. Amazon had like all the things this week.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:07Speaker 00

  Just like everything happened. So everyone was unhappy that Amazon could, uh, wanted you to let a person into your house with a special smart, uh, doorbell and lock. And they're like, okay, cool. We know you're uncomfortable with that. How about you give us access to your car?

• 28:21Speaker 01

  This is so smart.

• 28:22Speaker 00

  You think so?

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. So here, here's what I think the future is.

• 28:26Speaker 00

  Uh, all the cars being broken into all the time because people see Amazon delivery people leaving packages in them.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  And then they pretend it's, oh, oh, that's my car. And then they take the package. Oh, you mean you just break into a car because it has Amazon package in it?

• 28:39Speaker 02

  I mean, like that already happens if you don't have a doorbell or you live in New York City where you don't have a doorman and people just leave packages in your front door.

• 28:48Speaker 00

  I'm just saying, you see an Amazon truck or UPS truck in a parking lot and you're a criminal, you're just gonna like, see what happens. And if the whole bunch of cars get filled with boxes, you might see what you can do about that.

• 28:57Speaker 02

  Why?

• 28:58Speaker 01

  What's the best size of box for a thief to target? Right?

• 29:03Speaker 02

  Probably a smaller one.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Like a small one that's like a phone?

• 29:06Speaker 00

  No, no, it's literally at a parking lot. They can, anything that'll fit in their car is the best size. They're gonna have a car there.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  Although you also have to make out with it like really quickly. So you don't want a big box because you can't run away with it unless you have a different car to throw it all in and drive away like, you know, Santa Claus with all your Amazon packages.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  My theory is that in the future, I will be able to be, it's, it's kinda like being an Uber driver, but like a very like low lift version of an Uber driver where Amazon just strolls up to my car while I'm at work and puts something in my trunk. And then I drive home and then later at some point, somehow that thing is, it turns out that was actually for my neighbor. And you know what I mean? Like instead of making extra trips to deliver things, use the trips that people are always, already driving. Like I'm taking my body and my mostly empty car from city, city center to the suburbs every day.

• 30:07Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Why don't I bring something with me and drop it off at a neighbor's house and I get like a small little commission for that. But I didn't have to go out of my way. Right?

• 30:16Speaker 02

  I feel like maybe they trialed something like that before.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  Did they?

• 30:20Speaker 02

  Um, let me think.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Doesn't that sound like the future though?

• 30:22Speaker 00

  I mean, I can't be bothered to like walk to the UPS store that's half a block away from my office to return stuff.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:30Speaker 00

  Like, what are the, what are the, what's the likelihood I'm actually gonna do my neighbor a solid and deliver their package? I'll forget.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  Well, one-

• 30:35Speaker 00

  They'll just sit in my car.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  One, you build a reputation, just like on Uber, right?

• 30:39Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  So you're not gonna be doing deliveries if you're, if you're bad at it. Two, maybe there's some way that it's like locked so that you can't enjoy the fruits of your neighbor's Amazon purchase. But also, like, it's a chance to meet your neighbors for once.

• 30:58Speaker 00

  Hmm, that's true. I do not talk to my neighbors.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:01Speaker 00

  Except when their crap falls on my patio. It like floats down onto my patio from the floors above and they come knock on my door and ask to come get their stuff.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  That's nice.

• 31:09Speaker 02

  Okay, yes. There is a thing called Amazon Flex, apparently, which lets you deliver packages for Amazon on an hourly rate. So somewhat that is, has sort of existed. I don't know that it's done based on location or like based on where you're headed, but there is like a app economy or job type thing where it's like an on-demand delivery person who is just around to help make deliveries.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  This is great. I think it's all gonna happen.

• 31:38Speaker 00

  All I'm saying is, I've had my car broken into, I've seen lots of cars get broken into. It's like a real, genuine problem in San Francisco. It happens all the time. And, uh, yeah, I don't, I don't think that having a package delivered to my car is a especially secure thing.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I, I think it's also just an overly engineered solution to a problem that I think, I'm not really sure that people, like, people have problems getting their packages, sure. I'm not sure, this is, seems like a super complicated way to fix that problem. And like, it's funny, cause what Amazon is doing, it's like just eating Walmart's lunch. And, you know, like, the, the one thing Walmart had is, is like, we'll bring your groceries to your car. And Amazon's like, no, we're gonna do that, but also, we're gonna do that when you're not there.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  In, in Amazon's ideal world, you're really not involved.

• 32:33Speaker 00

  Well, if you thought that it was creepy that Amazon could get into your house or your car, you're gonna love that you can now buy an Echo Dot for your children.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:42Speaker 00

  Actually, this is kinda sweet. I don't know, this is okay, right?

• 32:45Speaker 02

  I think...

• 32:46Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 32:47Speaker 02

  I mean, it is a little weird to get your kids involved with like AI early on in life, but it's kind of an edible. Like, they sell Fire Kids tablets. Of course, there's gonna be something for kids to interact with that uses their voice. It's more fun for them because they're not looking at a screen and, you know, like lets them play games, lets them probably run around a little more, like encourages them to not be staring at a computer all day long. That, I guess, that's fine.

• 33:13Speaker 01

  I am contractually obligated to love this because it has a bunch of audiobooks in it.

• 33:18Speaker 00

  So we should explain what the deal is with this. It is a special like kid mode that then Amazon has this thing called Free Time where it includes parental controls. And so you get the parental controls for free. And then there's like this mode for Alexa where it like encourages kids to say thank you and lets them ask follow-up questions. And it lets them, it like customizes answers to the kids. So if they ask where babies come from, they're like, "You should talk to an adult." Or if they ask, uh, "I might, you know, they're being mean to me at school," it like gives them advice on bullying and again encourages them to talk to an adult. And so it's, it's a little bit safer for a kid. And kids are talking to these things anyway. It also apparently is more forgiving for the wake word. So instead of having to say Alexa exactly, you could say Aweksa.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  Aweksa.

• 34:03Speaker 00

  Which is pretty great.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 34:05Speaker 00

  And then on top of that, if you want to pay for Free Time, it's a relatively cool service. You can get it on tablets and now it'll be on this thing. And you'll get a bunch of free like kid-friendly content so that they can like have a bunch of free kid-friendly content and not have, you don't have to worry about them, you know, downloading a million apps or stuff because they've got a bunch of stuff that they've got, got sitting there waiting for them.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  It's free for a year when you buy an Echo Dot Kids Edition or Fire Tablet Kids Edition, and then it's $3 a month for Prime customers.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  Should be noted also that even though it does come with free time, but it does cost like $30 or more than the regular Echo Dot, which is crazy because I don't think anyone, even at like the retail price, no one buys the Echo Dot full price. They just wait for it to go on sale because they always go on sale. So for me, it's like $80 for one Echo Dot for kids. It's kind of a lot.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's interesting. I feel like, weren't we talking about something recently? It's crazy that so much of this is about the content now and not really about the basic assistant or the basic, I guess this is a lot about the assistant too. It feels like they have a lot of the hard early problems solved and this is like a nice Generation 2 thing to be able to do.

• 35:21Speaker 02

  Well, I remember when Benicio, our former transportation editor, Tamara's son, reviewed the Google Home and the Amazon Echo for us. He said that he had preference for Alexa because he said it was more fun to talk to you and like it told him jokes. And sometimes when he asked it inappropriate question, it would sometimes say, or like, you know, like, "Don't do that," or like, "That's not nice." Or sometimes he'll ask him to tell the top 10 jokes that it has and it'll be like, "I can't tell you because some of them are not appropriate for your age." And he's like, "Hmm, that's, why would you say that to me?" I just thought that was really cute. Yeah, I'd be interested to hear what he thinks of the kids' version.

• 36:00Speaker 00

  Amazon does a better job of recognizing that this weird thing called a family exists and that there might be more than one person in your home.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  I've heard of those. Please tell me more.

• 36:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, Google does a pretty good job. They did a pretty good job with Home and they've done a pretty good job with Android. There's like multi-user stuff or whatever. But Apple and Siri just assumes that everybody has like one of everything that it makes. But Amazon has always done a really good job of multi-user. They took a minute for Alexa, but they got there. And they've always done a very good job of recognizing that there are children who get tablets and who get devices and that you need To hand this thing to your kid and like have some sort of sense of it. The parental controls that are built into fire tablets are just heads and shoulders above anything else that you can get. You know, the tablets themselves are like man, Android on tablets is pretty man. I know it's not technically Android, it's built on Android, it's Amazon's fire thing, blah, blah, blah.

• 36:54Speaker 00

  But still, they get, I think Amazon deserves credit for realizing that there are children and children get things. They use things. I don't know.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Along those lines, Amazon is reportedly working on its first home robot. Which is, it kind of seems like a play, kind of what, to what you were saying now, like. Because we've talked a lot about like, don't gender the robots and you know, Google is kind of right to have sort of a non-person. Like Google Assistant doesn't feel like a person nearly as much as Alexa or Siri do.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  But you can't deny how attached we can get to something like, watch Bicentennial Man, I think is a good primer. On this sort of like, yeah, it's just a robot, it's not real, it's not a human. But if Amazon puts Alexa in a body, I feel like you could get way, especially a kid could get way more attached to Alexa.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  I mean, even robots that don't have a personality. I think last week, James Vincent wrote a story where he interviewed the iRobot CEO or head of something. And he was talking about how like, people are super attached to their Roombas. Like, they refuse to send their Roombas in for maintenance if something's wrong with it. They're like, no, you send someone to come fix my Roomba at my house. There's no way I'm sending my like Rosie the Roomba away, which is wild to me that people are that attached to a robot in their home. Even ones that don't talk or like, don't have a face.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Well, I also heard this at iRobot that like soldiers get really attached to their bomb disposal robots. And it's kind of like, like losing like a dog if like the bomb disposal robot actually gets blown up by a bomb.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:42Speaker 00

  So I haven't watched Bicentennial Man in forever, but I'm gonna say, if you want a heartwarming robot movie, you should watch Robot and Frank. It is amazing. Have you heard of this movie? Yeah, I see.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  I have not.

• 38:53Speaker 00

  I forgot about it. Oh, it's so good. It's Frank Langella. He's like an old retired jewel thief, and he gets a robot butler to like help him in his old age. And he's like, screw this, I'm not getting old. Also, this robot's annoying. Oh, wait, no, I love this robot. Let's go do a heist together. And he like, it gets his robot butler to like go do a heist with him. It's amazing.

• 39:11Speaker 02

  That reminds me, that reminds me of a cartoon I grew up watching. I don't know if you guys are familiar with this, but there's an anime called like Doraemon. It's, it's from Japan. It is like this blue robot that this kid grows up with. And that basically is my first introduction to what a robot is, because this robot is magical. He has a pocket where he can pull a bunch of different toys and gadgets and all this cool stuff to make like this kid's life better, because he, without him, he's just sort of a loser, frankly. So, and then, yeah, like, and then one day, like, sometimes they get into fight, and like, Doraemon will go away. And then the kid is all like, oh, no, like, I can't live without him. I need him. And like, oh, he's not just a robot, he's my friend. Anyway, it's a great show.

• 39:51Speaker 00

  So, right, so this robot is codenamed Vesta, the Roman goddess of the hearth, according to Bloomberg. And there'll be prototypes in 2019. And I'll just be curious to see if it can, I don't know, handle stairs. Roombas don't fall down stairs, but

• 40:07Speaker 02

  But they can't go upstairs either.

• 40:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't know. Stairs.

• 40:11Speaker 02

  They just don't leave the floor.

• 40:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, it'll probably just roll around. Yeah, but I think it should have a vacuum. It should, it should have a little sweep, just like a little extra thing. Just put a robot on top of a Roomba. That's all I want.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  Just put a face, like, put googly eyes on a Roomba, and like a voice.

• 40:29Speaker 00

  And then the other rumor is, they've been, they started teasing the Fire TV Cube, which, fine, great. I don't, I don't, like, it'll be a Fire TV with Alexa in it, which is a great idea. I would definitely, like, consider having that under my TV. I definitely don't think it needs to be hyped this much.

• 40:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. Paul and I were talking earlier about how this reminds me of like a It's another one of those crazy over-engineered silicon HBO Silicon Valley thing where it's like, "The box." And it's just like, just does the like weird obscure thing and it's like, "Ta-da, it is a thing that's gonna be revolutionary." It's like, it's a TV that's also an echo. Okay, sure.

• 41:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  It does seem to be exactly what they should build, though.

• 41:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  Because my Chromecast is on the fritz. Like Chromecast is built into my Vizio and I basically have to reboot my Vizio all the time because Chromecast will start flickering. My Vizio can't get software updates because it's broken in some other way.

• 41:29Speaker 00

  Oh, so I had the same problem last week. You know what you have to do? You have to unplug it and then hit the power button a bunch to like, completely kill it and leave it unplugged for a couple of minutes? And then plug it back in and it'll connect to the wifi again. It's nuts. My Vizio is just a garbage fire. I have to unplug it like once a week now.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  So this would be great, except the main thing that I watch over Chromecast is YouTube.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  No.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  And we all know how well that relationship is going.

• 41:57Speaker 00

  By the way, while we're recording, Amazon released their earnings. $51 billion in sales, up 43% year-over-year, and a net profit, which is always exciting when Amazon actually pulls a profit of $1.6 billion. Although they did lose a bunch of money overseas. Fine. They're just, everybody's making all the money, all the time.

• 42:16Speaker 02

  I don't know about everybody.

• 42:17Speaker 00

  Okay. Everybody, every, by everybody, I mean huge companies are making all the money.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Like five or seven CEOs of large companies are making all the money.

• 42:29Speaker 00

  Do you ever need to send money internationally? "I want to warn you against using your bank or PayPal." "Sure, they get their money from A to B, but that transfer will cost you more than it should, a lot more." Turns out, that's the old way. And now there's a new, smarter, and cheaper way to send money internationally. It's called TransferWise. It was founded by two pals, Tavet and Cristo, who were frustrated by their bank's bad exchange rates and high fees. They wondered, "What if they could bypass the banks?" So they did, and they built TransferWise. That was seven years ago, and since then, 2 million people have used TransferWise. People money, sending money home, businesses paying suppliers, freelancers getting paid, and so on.

• 43:11Speaker 00

  TransferWise's clever new technology gives you a great exchange rate and a low fee. So it'll put some extra money in your pocket for the more important things. Because apparently, no one's ever said, "It's important that my bank get some extra money." I've asked, and I've never heard anybody admit to saying that. So you can test it out for free at transferwise.com/podcast? Just podcast. Or you can download the app. Once again, it's transferwise.com/podcast. It's the wise way to send money. All right, we're back. Just in time. We almost, we almost forgot, but we didn't, because we never do, that Paul has a segment every week, and he's always ready for it. And I never have to vamp.

• 43:53Speaker 00

  I never have to talk and get ready for him to get to what he's gonna talk about. And so he's always just got it queued up. It's always right there.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  It's always called, Dieter, it's always called, "I've carved this for you out of aluminum." So this week-

• 44:08Speaker 00

  Thank you, Paul.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. The Chord Hugo 2, which is a $2,500 DAC, like, headphone amp. So you plug this into your iPhone that no longer includes a DAC. And, uh, and you, so you plug this in over USB, and then it converts the digital audio to analog audio. And you plug in your million-dollar headphones into this, and then you have the best listening experience in the world. Vlad reviewed it for The Verge. He didn't really like it. Obviously, $2,500 is way too much to spend on something that is not amazing.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  But the design of this thing is like, it is the most 90s thing I've ever seen in my life. And I thought I'd seen a lot of 90s references lately. But this is, this is 90s. Or, this is like, this, it reminds me, the aesthetic is, is kind of like, um, what was the Aqua? What was the original design language for OS 10? Aqua?

• 45:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was lickable.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  Lickable. This is lickable plus aluminum.

• 45:26Speaker 00

  It's a lickable DAC.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  Like, if you, if you took a modern MacBook Pro, and you melded it with Aqua from OS 10-

• 45:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  And you made a DAC, it would look like this. And I love it.

• 45:41Speaker 02

  Looks like you can hurt somebody with this.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  You could definitely hurt somebody with it. It's huge, it's heavy, and apparently over emphasizes the highs, so it doesn't make for an enjoyable listening experience. But it's beautiful.

• 45:53Speaker 00

  All right, well, can I, can I talk about phones for a second? Just, just for a second. So I've been using the Essential phone for the past week, week and a half, and

• 46:02Speaker 02

  Explain yourself.

• 46:04Speaker 00

  Yo, I love it. It's great. I don't know, everyone's like, oh, it's like jank and it's got bad scrolling and whatever. And I just haven't experienced it. Maybe it's because I have, I like fresh installed it on 8.1. I like took it out of the box and like did all the stuff from scratch and didn't restore and whatever. But yeah, I've had zero problems, except for the camera. The camera is like

• 46:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what I was gonna ask, the camera's better now.

• 46:24Speaker 00

  It's just the camera. And I mean, that's a lot. But

• 46:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:28Speaker 00

  Uh, you know, like I've been bouncing between a Pixel 2 XL and an iPhone 10. And I've got the P20 Pro waiting for me at home and I need to switch, uh, try that for a while. And I gotta tell you, I'm just super done with, um, slightly oversized phones. I love that the Essential phone is most, it just has a little bezel on the bottom and you get a big screen and a small body. I love the notch, uh, on the Essential phone anyway.

• 46:54Speaker 01

  Small being relative.

• 46:55Speaker 00

  I love the notch on the iPhone 10.

• 46:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, can you, so I've never actually held an Essential, an Essential phone in my hand. How does it compare to a regular Pixel 2?

• 47:04Speaker 00

  Uh, to a regular Pixel 2? It's a little bit wider, it's about the same height.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  Okay. So Pixel 2 is smaller. So I'm a very small person and I think the Pixel 2 is like about my limit of how large I'd like a phone to be, just because my hands are smaller. I can't reach all the way to the top of the screen if I held it in a different way. And with the case on, it like almost doesn't fit my jean pocket. So

• 47:25Speaker 00

  So you don't want a bigger screen because you don't want to have to reach that much further up?

• 47:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, like that is actually a problem for someone's as small as I am, which is, you know, like I've never used an iPhone, but I think that the reason people love like the SEC watch is because it's small and it's cheap and it does what it does. And it's like the size is perfect for smaller people.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  Another good reason for Google to put this little drawer thing at the bottom, or whatever it's called.

• 47:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. Speaking of the SE. Yeah, there are a lot of sketchy rumors about version 2.0 of the SE.

• 47:54Speaker 01

  So Dieter, just to be clear, it's mostly just the size and the feel of the Essential Phone? That's what's what's

• 48:03Speaker 00

  It's the feel, it's the overall aesthetic of it. It like, it just, it feels heavy, it like, looks really good. It makes me feel like a thing that I want to like have. And whereas the Pixel 2 is kind of bland and the iPhone looks like every other iPhone. I think the iPhone SE is like in this for people. People like

• 48:19Speaker 01

  Those are my exact reasons, exact reasons why I want an iPhone SE 2. I've been, I've been using iPhone 7 with a cracked screen for 100 years now. I want a smaller phone.

• 48:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:32Speaker 01

  I, I, uh, Creighton, who produced the Circuit Breaker live show for us, uses an iPhone SE and I'm jealous of him all the time. If they just upgraded the processor, upgraded the camera, kept the exact same form factor, there's a rumor that it will be wireless charging and

• 48:49Speaker 02

  Headphone jack.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  I really hope they don't get rid of that headphone jack. But if you think about what the iPhone SE is aimed at, it's aimed at emerging markets that are probably not going to also want to buy Bluetooth headphones. And they also probably, Apple doesn't want to cut into its margins by packing in a pair of lightning headphones.

• 49:06Speaker 00

  Right.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  It makes, to me, it makes a lot of sense to keep the headphone jack on it and it could be, it could be my dream phone. That's where I'm at right now. Cause the size, I'm just, I don't, I don't need a big phone anymore.

• 49:18Speaker 00

  I need a big phone less and less. I've been, you know, limiting my Twitter use. I basically, I mean, on my phone, on my, on, when I've got TweetDeck open, I'm still a maniac. And I'm sorry, everybody. I'm also sorry for when I'm at the airport. I'm also really bad at Twitter, uh, when I'm at the airport.

• 49:33Speaker 01

  Why, why be sorry though?

• 49:36Speaker 02

  What do you mean, airport Twitter? Like Airport Dieter Twitter is like when he gets the most Dieter.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  That's the thing. We want pure, unfiltered, 100% from the source Dieter. That's what the world craves.

• 49:52Speaker 00

  All natural, organic.

• 49:54Speaker 02

  Free range.

• 49:56Speaker 01

  Free range Dieter.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  Free range Dieter in an airport.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  Never been caged.

• 50:01Speaker 00

  Anyway, like, I don't need the big screen because I'm trying to limit my phone use down to like some of the core essentials. And that just like a smaller screen sort of forces you to like, if you want to do something more, you go over to a bigger screen. And so it.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  I do, I really do hope that the trend in like, producing smaller phones again with like maximizing, you know, screens, um, real estate on a small device could be a really good move for a bunch of manufacturers to now do just because like, we are pretty much getting as big a smartphone as we're gonna get at this point. I don't think they can get any bigger or like hope they don't get any bigger. So hopefully, smaller ones can be on the way because they definitely figured out how to make the screen bigger now notch or no notch.

• 50:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, so the OnePlus 6 is going to be announced May 16th. I love that they've basically announced everything about this phone and now they're announcing when they're going to announce it. Fine.

• 50:53Speaker 00

  But I don't know, we could talk about notches, I guess. Like, I, I'm fine with notches. It's fine. Like, it's dumb when they are just copying Apple just for the sake of it. But if you just get a little bit of extra screen real estate and you use it well, and I think the status bar on an Android phone is a really good thing to stick in a notch zone. That's like perfect. There's all a bunch of icons up there anyway. Get that off my main screen and like, put it up there on the left and the right of the notch. Um, then I get an extra, you know, 50 pixels to work with and then the phone feels smaller.

• 51:26Speaker 00

  Relative to the screen. I think it's a win. I think it's great.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's fun to say, but I really have a hard time getting like mad or excited about anybody's notches anymore.

• 51:40Speaker 00

  We've just been, we've just been worn down?

• 51:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I guess it'll be cool when someone does the notchless phone.

• 51:48Speaker 00

  Like the S9?

• 51:49Speaker 01

  But no, that doesn't count. It doesn't count. It's gotta be, it's gotta be bezel-less. It's, you gotta be just holding a screen. You're just holding a rec, the rectangle of screen and you maybe at most can see a tiny little pixel-wide black border around that screen at most. That is where it has to go. Um, and so that's why we all need to have pop-out selfie cameras.

• 52:22Speaker 00

  New internet, new problems. HBO's Silicon Valley takes its too-real satire of tech culture to the next level this season as Richard Hendricks pivots his startup to develop a decentralized internet. It turns out the road to autonomous peer-to-peer network is paved with misguided car purchases, stealth acquisitions of pizza apps, and a lot of public puking. Plus, an ICO. No one said launching a startup was easy. Get the new episodes of Silicon Valley Sundays at 10 on HBO. I think there was a spoiler in that ad, but that's okay.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  That sounds like a spoiler.

• 52:54Speaker 00

  Don't worry about it. All right, I want to just talk about one more thing, and I only just want to talk about it so we're done. We've been teasing the Spotify event for like three weeks on the podcast, and they finally had it, and...

• 53:06Speaker 02

  I'm making the cringe face because that, it was, yeah, underwhelming to say the least. And it felt like, and the weird thing was that they literally had the event to promote a product geared towards exactly me. And yet, I'm just kinda like, oh, okay.

• 53:22Speaker 00

  So yeah, you're, you're, you love using free services. They've improved their free service and you just don't care?

• 53:27Speaker 02

  I mean, I, like I said, I think it's great that some playlists are now on demand, but like, if anything, this just tells me that I don't have to pay for Spotify. So like, oh, I mean, like, you know, they just went public. Their goal is to get more people to stream, like... Labels are happy when more people are streaming and Spotify is more happy when people are streaming. So to them, getting more users is what they want, free or paid.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. What is the value of a free user to Spotify versus unpaid?

• 53:58Speaker 02

  I mean, I think at some point, I think at some point, they hope that the free people will love the limited on demand and realize that they want it so bad, they'll pay for it. And or they'll just get a slew of people like me who are too cheap to pay for it and just be like, ads are fine. Only 15 on demand playlists a month is fine. So yeah, I mean, like, all they want right now is user growth so that they can go back to investors and be like, look, we're growing. So yeah, that's that's a beginning strategy. I don't know how sustainable it is. We'll see. Yeah, I mean, really nothing to report, no hardware, unfortunately.

• 54:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm sad.

• 54:36Speaker 00

  I'm really sad. I really want that hardware. I think it's really interesting.

• 54:39Speaker 02

  Like, I think it is coming down, like, coming out at some point. Today is not the day.

• 54:44Speaker 00

  All right. That is, I think, The Vergecast. I want to tease a bunch of stuff. The next couple of weeks are going to be utter madness on theverge.com, at least from tech news. We've got F8, and then after that, we have Microsoft Build, and then after that, we have Google I/O, and then after that, I will die. In addition, we have other podcasts you should listen to. Why'd You Push That Button, Season 2. This episode this week is about saving your date's phone number on your phone. How do you get those digits? Also, and this is really exciting, on May 1, The Verge is launching. Am I allowed to say this? I'm going to say

• 55:24Speaker 00

  it. We're launching a new YouTube channel. It's called Verge Science, and it's going to be great. I've been seeing some of the videos that they've been making. They're getting ready. It's going to be a whole separate channel just for our science content, and it's going to be really awesome. So keep an eye out for that channel. Make sure you smash that subscribe button, fam, once it pops up. Just we'll tell you all about it when it happens.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  The bell, I bet.

• 55:47Speaker 00

  There's a bell. We get notifications. It's great. You can also follow all of us on Twitter. We, of course, all are Verge. We're also on Instagram, where our Instagram story game is still amazing. It's Verge on Instagram. I am Backlon. Paul is FuturePaul. Nat is Nat Garen. There's also other podcasts. Recode. There's Recode Decode with Kara Swisher. There's Recode Media with Peter Kafka. And we will be back. Some of us, not all of us, but some of us. And maybe a surprise guest, maybe two surprise guests. I don't know yet. It's a mystery. Next week. There's so much, you're just teasing so much, Dieter. You just gotta pay attention. On all these promises. Well, the good news is I don't have to deliver next week. I'm not going to be on. Somebody else will have to figure it out. Rock and roll. Paul.