Pod Insights The Vergecast The state of Android, smartwatches and Twitter hearts About this episode This week brought no shortage of topics to discuss, but one item stood out among the smoke and mirrors. Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Dan Seifert are joined by Nicola Fumo of Racked in the hypeseat to discuss the state of smartwatches, what might happen with Google's two operating systems, and of course, the new branded vape from musical artist The Weeknd. It's not one to miss.
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Transcript 12,837 words · 4 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:02 Nilay Patel? Well, that's a good start for this November 5th, 2015, knowing that it's somewhere on the website that you love and co-create with your friends, that there's a vicious burn lurking.
0:13 Speaker 01 Hey, at least I didn't mention the Packers in it.
0:15 Nilay Patel? I don't want to talk about that. Anyway, so Dieter is here. Hello. Welcome to the Vergecast, Dieter. I'm... He's generally here, but you weren't gone last week, so you're back. Dan Seifert is here.
0:27 Speaker 02 I am.
0:28 Nilay Patel? Hello. And then my girl in the hype seat, Nicola Fumo from Ract is here.
0:32 Speaker 03 Hello.
0:33 Nilay Patel? Nicola, how's, what is it, Project Overlord?
0:36 Speaker 03 Dude, Operation Figurehead.
0:39 Nilay Patel? Operation Figurehead.
0:40 Speaker 03 Come on.
0:41 Nilay Patel? Project Overlord. How's your hashtag slash life strategy going?
0:47 Speaker 03 I mean, you know I've been meeting with your staff.
0:50 Nilay Patel? Yes. Nicola, this is true, so here's, I'll just want to set some scenes for people.
0:56 Speaker 03 Please.
0:57 Nilay Patel? So we, at Vox Media, we have an office building here in Midtown New York. We have, basically, every floor of this office building contains Vox Media employees at this point. There's a guy in the basement, just desperately...
1:07 Speaker 03 Oh, sub-basement, yeah.
1:08 Nilay Patel? Yeah, no, okay, SB1. He's down there, right in butt sports. And then, so The Verge is on the ninth floor, the studio where we're recording this on the eighth floor, and then Ract, and Dieter and Curb are on the 10th floor. But I've suddenly noticed that many, many, there's a lot of cross-floor pollination as Nicola has begun to weave...
1:29 Speaker 03 You'll catch me all over the place.
1:30 Nilay Patel? She's begun to weave her way.
1:31 Speaker 03 You'll catch me on nine, you'll catch me on eight. I've been on five. What do you even know about five?
1:34 Nilay Patel? I've never been to five. What the hell happens on five?
1:38 Speaker 02 You have to take a different elevator to get there. That's all I need.
1:40 Speaker 03 Yeah, you'll take a different elevator.
1:41 Speaker 01 Wait, so you can't go directly from five to nine?
1:43 Nilay Patel? There's one elevator.
1:44 Speaker 02 There's only one central elevator that hits all the floors.
1:47 Nilay Patel? This is the worst radio in history.
1:48 Speaker 01 Oh, my God.
1:49 Speaker 02 It's split off at the seventh floor.
1:50 Nilay Patel? Here's what I want you to do.
1:51 Speaker 01 Let's start this all over.
1:52 Nilay Patel? Now, look, here...
1:53 Speaker 01 Hello, welcome to the Vergecast.
1:54 Nilay Patel? Let's talk about elevators.
1:56 Speaker 01 Greetings, mobile accomplishers.
1:57 Nilay Patel? Anyhow, Nicola, you will begin to see her, the fruits of her subtle weaving, I don't know what that means.
2:06 Speaker 03 My Operation Figurehead.
2:08 Nilay Patel? Operation Overlord.
2:11 Nilay Patel? Anyhow, Nicola's here. Hi Nicola.
2:13 Speaker 03 Hi.
2:13 Nilay Patel? I have a question for you.
2:14 Speaker 03 Yeah.
2:15 Nilay Patel? Um, since, you know, you're a style editor and all. I walked out of the house wearing this, this thing, like the shirt not buttoned, and my wife was like, "You look like a shithead," basically. Shithead or no?
2:26 Speaker 03 I mean-
2:27 Nilay Patel? So I'm wearing, the people on the radio, I'm wearing a t-shirt with a shirt over it and then a jacket over the shirt.
2:31 Speaker 03 I don't really know why you did that, but I don't think you look like a shithead.
2:35 Nilay Patel? I mean, she was basically like, "You can make your own dumb mistakes, Neela." And like, like, literally, like, dismissed me.
2:40 Speaker 02 Were those are like, exact words, shithead? They came out of Becky's mouth?
2:44 Nilay Patel? Becky, I think, um, she didn't say shithead. But we've been married for some time, and I, you're married, you know.
2:51 Speaker 02 I, uh, yeah.
2:51 Speaker 03 Code words for shithead.
2:53 Nilay Patel? Yeah, she, she said-
2:54 Speaker 02 Frequently, nothing needs to be said for me to hear in my head, shithead.
2:56 Nilay Patel? Yeah, there was a, there was a grumbling noise, a series of stomping motions.
3:01 Speaker 01 Was it, was it one of those, "So that, huh?"
3:03 Nilay Patel? Yeah, yeah, it was bad, it was bad.
3:05 Speaker 03 What is an outfit that she likes? Where she's like, "Ooh, good work."
3:08 Nilay Patel? Oh, yeah, there's, I mean, she purchases most of my clothes, so like, that is, that's like a thing. Um, but yeah, she likes it when the shirts are buttoned and I wear a tie. That's a, that's a fact.
3:16 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yeah. You do that often.
3:18 Nilay Patel? Yes, uh, again, because I'm five and I'm dressed by the woman I'm married to.
3:21 Speaker 03 I always figured you're going somewhere. Like, that's what figureheads do. They have to go places where they have to.
3:25 Speaker 01 Wouldn't it be creepy if you were five and dressed by the woman that you were married to?
3:28 Nilay Patel? Well, not physically dressed.
3:30 Speaker 01 But if you were five and married, that seems wrong.
3:32 Nilay Patel? Oh, yeah. Well, as a five-year-old, I married, um, a fellow kid in a garden. A lovely ceremony, recess. You, you didn't happen to? All right, whatever, this is our show. Uh, as you, as you may have noticed from this conversation, it's about technology and culture, and how they blend together. Uh, so there's a reason Nicola's here. I think an ultimate-
3:55 Speaker 03 Something's an accident.
3:55 Nilay Patel? An ultimate Nicola moment happened this week.
3:58 Speaker 03 Oh, yes.
3:59 Nilay Patel? Go ahead, go ahead. Tell me all about it.
4:01 Speaker 03 Pack vaporizer, which is the iPhone of vaporizers, to put it short. I don't get paid by them, yet.
4:09 Speaker 03 But they collaborated with The Weeknd, no third E, and-
4:16 Speaker 01 How do you, how do you denote that when saying something? Do you, like, weekend?
4:19 Speaker 03 Dude, my phone is like, it will not learn Weekend, Weekend.
4:24 Nilay Patel? How often are you typing that into your phone?
4:26 Speaker 03 Too often.
4:27 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
4:27 Speaker 03 It's happening.
4:28 Nilay Patel? It seems as though.
4:29 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm. Um-
4:31 Speaker 03 Uh, yeah, so he, he, The Weeknd and Pax, the vaporizer brand, have collaborated on a, uh, tour-specific Weekend vaporizer. That's like, I think it's 325 instead of 280, but it says XO, which is The Weeknd's brand, on it. And it plays, I can't feel my face, like, when you're smoking the herbal matter.
4:55 Nilay Patel? Yeah, so it's a vape that plays pop music at you when you suck weed.
4:59 Speaker 03 That you can only buy at Weekend shows.
5:00 Nilay Patel? Ooh.
5:01 Speaker 03 Yeah.
5:01 Speaker 02 I'm, I'm very confused by this tie-up, because The Weeknd sings about doing pills all the time. Like, every single Weekend lyric has a reference to pills. How do you do pills through a vape?
5:11 Speaker 03 Well, I think it's a different version. It's a new way to not feel your face. He's like, standing. He's got, he's like a pop artist and trying pot.
5:20 Nilay Patel? I just think, I, I just think it's amazing that, like, A, well, you, we talked about this on the show last time you were here.
5:24 Speaker 03 Yeah.
5:24 Nilay Patel? Like, A, it's a gadget that has made smoking weed totally acceptable all over the place.
5:28 Speaker 03 Beautiful gadget.
5:28 Nilay Patel? It's a beautiful gadget. B, The Weeknd's two major endorsements now are Apple in, like, a weed computer.
5:36 Speaker 03 And Alexander Wang. He also this week announced he's gonna be doing, like, a collaboration with Alexander Wang. So he's just, like, all over the place.
5:43 Nilay Patel? Yeah, he's doing it. I mean, ultimate Nicola moment. Like, tell me, so when, when this happened at The Verge, like, we all, like, freaked out. Tell me what happened at Ract when this went down.
5:50 Speaker 03 Yeah, when I got this press release, I just, like, went into the Ract lounge and I was like, "We have reached peak Nicola. These things are happening. We have to write about them right now." And then, you know, someone did, because, figure out, I didn't write it myself.
6:03 Nilay Patel? Ooh, you, you sent it out.
6:04 Speaker 03 I signed it.
6:05 Nilay Patel? That's a, so.
6:06 Speaker 02 Delegation.
6:07 Nilay Patel? Do you also do this dismissive hand-wave when you assign stories?
6:09 Speaker 03 Yes, I have, yeah, that's my Slack emoji.
6:11 Speaker 01 All right, well, so hang on. So he, he had a hit album, and then he immediately turned and partnered with a tech company, a weed tech company.
6:19 Nilay Patel? Well, the album... The album came out and the single that was launched off the album was at WWDC with Apple.
6:25 Speaker 01 If he gets named as a creative director for a tech company, I am officially naming him the next Will I Am.
6:32 Speaker 03 But he probably can't because he's too in, he's too in bed with Apple. So he can't like, can't really go anywhere from there.
6:37 Speaker 01 That's, that's true.
6:39 Nilay Patel? He can be the creative director for the weed computer company.
6:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, that, that, that's acceptable.
6:43 Speaker 03 Yeah.
6:44 Speaker 01 Yeah.
6:44 Speaker 03 Natural.
6:45 Nilay Patel? I mean, I think that's the most important story of the week in terms of technology culture.
6:48 Speaker 01 That's the first cast, everybody.
6:49 Speaker 03 This is the, this is the math stuff.
6:52 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
6:52 Speaker 03 Yeah.
6:52 Nilay Patel? This is, I mean, but this is the thing, right? Like here's the big musician partnering with the gadget company and the biggest tech company in the world. Like, I don't know. It's like one of those things. All right. So we got, there's other news we should talk about, although I think we, I think we could just be done there.
7:06 Speaker 01 Right.
7:06 Nilay Patel? So some minor news, a little stuff. Uh, Google this week, last week, is this week or last week?
7:13 Speaker 01 It's a little both.
7:14 Nilay Patel? Yeah. Uh, well, it's announced, I think at the tail end of last week. Um, it came out in a Wall Street Journal story that was suspiciously planted.
7:21 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:23 Nilay Patel? That Android and Chrome OS would something, something.
7:28 Speaker 01 Canoodle.
7:28 Nilay Patel? Something.
7:29 Speaker 01 Yeah. Merge.
7:31 Nilay Patel? Merge.
7:31 Speaker 01 Come together.
7:32 Nilay Patel? Kill one another.
7:33 Speaker 01 Right now.
7:36 Speaker 01 Over me.
7:37 Nilay Patel? And so we put up a headline. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna reveal some inside baseball.
7:40 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:41 Nilay Patel? We put up a headline based on some reporting that we had been trying to do for a long time.
7:45 Speaker 01 Yep.
7:45 Nilay Patel? Uh, cause we had heard this a long time ago, that Android would quote, kill Chrome OS.
7:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:51 Nilay Patel? Which is basically what Google was saying, but they're trying very hard not to say.
7:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:56 Nilay Patel? Like five years from now, there will not be a product called Chrome OS. It's like fairly obvious.
8:00 Speaker 01 Yeah. Yeah.
8:01 Speaker 02 At least not a consumer facing product called Chrome OS.
8:04 Nilay Patel? Who the, who the hell knows?
8:04 Speaker 01 Well, so the, the question, like the, the technical question is like, what, what is it, what does it even mean to be Android or Chrome OS? And like, what's the foundation of it? And like, to me, it's like,
8:14 Speaker 02 That's a technical question or the existential question?
8:16 Speaker 01 Both. And it's like, it's, it's like the, the kernel that like, does, that makes other things happen, right? Um, so like, we talk about like TV OS and watch OS is basically fundamentally being iOS. I don't know, like, so is Android getting packed into Chrome or Chrome OS? Or is Chrome OS the pieces of it that you care about getting packed into Android? It's like, are they going to build Android up to support it? Or are they going to like, trim? I don't know that Chrome OS needs that much more trimming down. Are they going to trim Chrome OS down so it can run on other phone type things?
8:51 Nilay Patel? But anyway, so the backstory is we put up this headline and said, "Kill." Because we, we had been, we had been hot on this case.
8:57 Speaker 01 Yep.
8:57 Nilay Patel? The story came out in the Journal. It looked very much like it had been massaged by a certain large search company. And that, I mean, whatever, if they wanted to place, DuckDuckGo told, leaked to the Journal. And I mean, I don't mean to say there's any like malice there. Like, it just looked like it had been placed, you know? Like, like you do, you get a story. Anyway, we put up "Kill." Everybody freaked out.
9:21 Speaker 02 Everybody being, everybody we knew at Google.
9:24 Nilay Patel? Everybody we knew at Google, because a lot of people Google, uh, read the verge. Um, and so there was this like instant flurry of conversation about how everything will be fine. They're not killing it. The products will remain separate. They're still selling so many Chromebooks to schools. They're gonna sell them forever.
9:41 Speaker 01 Yep.
9:42 Nilay Patel? Suddenly Hiroshi Lochheimer is like.
9:44 Speaker 01 Tweeting.
9:45 Nilay Patel? Tweeting.
9:45 Speaker 01 Well, he's been tweeting a while.
9:46 Nilay Patel? Yeah, but, but like, if you're, the reason I brought up the "it's placed in the Journal" part is like, if you're gonna say the stuff to the Wall Street Journal.
9:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:55 Nilay Patel? And get the story in the Journal.
9:56 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:57 Nilay Patel? Why not just?
9:58 Speaker 01 Get it right.
9:58 Nilay Patel? Get it right. Or why not come out ahead of that story and tell it yourself and let everybody? It's, there's like a weird sloppy messaging part where it's like, they didn't really know what they were wanting to say. They said something and now they've been scrambling to correct it ever since.
10:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, including like tweets from Hiroshi and also finally a post on the Google Chrome blog that Chrome OS is here to stay. And if you read through the post, uh, the joke I made on Twitter, uh, is that Google is really good at parsing data and they're also pretty good at parsing words.
10:26 Nilay Patel? Ooh. Ooh. Although I will say Google PR is the most notoriously disconnected PR operation.
10:33 Speaker 02 Yes, it is, it is a Hydra head of PR.
10:35 Nilay Patel? It's like, it's like actually hard.
10:37 Speaker 01 You know?
10:38 Nilay Patel? To suggest that they have like done some like careful arranging of words.
10:43 Speaker 01 I've dealt, I, I, I would say that it's about average. I've dealt, I've been, I've been dealing a lot of PR issues over the past while and I would, I would, I'd put them in the middle of the.
10:52 Nilay Patel? Oh yeah, no, they're good.
10:53 Speaker 01 Yeah.
10:53 Nilay Patel? I enjoy, I'm just saying, it's, it's hard to like. Well, there's some mastermind plan going on in the background.
11:01 Speaker 01 Because there's not at Google. Google is like, like Sergey Brin gets an idea and all of a sudden there's like a giant multimillion dollar division like a week later. And like, are we gonna tell anybody about this? Like, yeah, I guess.
11:10 Nilay Patel? Now we can do that more often because he runs Alphabet.
11:12 Speaker 01 Right. He's got like 26 letters to play with.
11:14 Nilay Patel? Did you see that story, Nikola, that Sergey Brin literally renamed the company Alphabet like on a whim? Did no focus testing or asking of people?
11:20 Speaker 03 No, I didn't see that, but that's very figure headed.
11:23 Nilay Patel? That's what I'm saying. That's why, that's why I told you. Like, that's, that's like life goals.
11:27 Speaker 03 Yeah.
11:29 Nilay Patel? I don't know. So what do you, what do you, I think this is smart. I actually think Google needs a unified platform. I did a whole show with Walt yesterday where we talked about Google making its own hardware. Like they, Google needs to get into a different kind of game that isn't just like search.
11:44 Speaker 02 It's, it's, it's very odd that they've had these two separate platforms developing separate tracks and like for different purposes. Like when you think about like Apple and Microsoft, it kind of makes sense for them to have a desktop OS and a mobile OS because they have a legacy behind them. Like Google started this less than 10 years ago, right? For both Android and Chrome OS. So for them to have developed along two different tracks is kind of weird and it makes complete sense for them to eventually merge them and take the best of both and, and put it together.
12:12 Speaker 01 So what is Chrome OS fundamentally? Like what does it depend on as a computing platform?
12:18 Speaker 01 The web. Merging these two things is a hedge against the death of the web, which Google is terrified of. And they need to make sure that they are prepared to have a computing platform that can compete if the web ends up not being as important as apps in a real way that affects their business.
12:34 Nilay Patel? I don't think the web is dying. Like, you know, there's all this stuff.
12:38 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:38 Nilay Patel? Like, it's hard to kill the web with a product as shitty as Apple News.
12:44 Nilay Patel? You know, like, does anybody use Apple News?
12:46 Speaker 03 I do.
12:47 Nilay Patel? Do you?
12:47 Speaker 03 Yeah.
12:48 Nilay Patel? Have you checked Apple News?
12:50 Speaker 03 I read the Times briefing on it every morning.
12:53 Nilay Patel? So you use Apple News to bypass the New York Times paywall?
12:57 Speaker 03 I guess.
12:58 Speaker 01 I mean, that's totally legitimate.
13:00 Nilay Patel? Uh, but do you use it for anything else? You use it to read Ract?
13:03 Speaker 03 Well.
13:05 Speaker 03 It doesn't update. It'll be like a day old.
13:07 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
13:07 Speaker 03 It'll have nineteen hours ago stories and I'm like, we wrote stuff since then. But it won't. And I ask people here about it and they're like, yeah, not, we can't do anything. It's them. And I was like, oh, okay.
13:16 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
13:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
13:17 Nilay Patel? My.
13:19 Speaker 03 Just makes that noise. But somehow, but the New York Times one is.
13:22 Speaker 02 It's just emulating a newspaper in that respect.
13:23 Speaker 03 Yeah.
13:24 Speaker 02 You're getting a surprise news.
13:25 Speaker 03 But the New York Times one isn't. It's like, it's the six o'clock thing is there at six o'clock in the morning. And then I'm reading about Syria when I need to. Try to stay current.
13:36 Nilay Patel? Yeah. And I gotta figure out it's gotta know. You get that call. You're like, I actually have some deep, deep ideas about Syria right now. Uh, no, I actually have heard a lot of people complain from a lot of publications that their stuff doesn't update.
13:50 Speaker 02 Yep.
13:50 Nilay Patel? Um, cause it's like a glorified RSS, right?
13:52 Speaker 03 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is.
13:54 Nilay Patel? It's the backend. Um, I don't know. We should figure out the New York Times is doing that and deliver our own Syria news every day at six.
14:00 Speaker 01 Maybe you just have great news.
14:01 Nilay Patel? Apple News gets super weird every day at six.
14:04 Speaker 03 But you only can catch it for an hour.
14:06 Nilay Patel? Yeah. Wait, wait, wait. So actually, hype check Apple News.
14:09 Speaker 03 Hmm. On a number scale?
14:11 Nilay Patel? However you want to do it.
14:13 Speaker 03 Three stars.
14:15 Speaker 01 Wait, three stars or three likes? Oh, we should talk about that.
14:18 Nilay Patel? That's in the lightning round.
14:19 Speaker 01 God damn it.
14:20 Nilay Patel? The third section of the Vercast today.
14:22 Speaker 01 Are we gonna talk about Twitter lightning in the lightning round?
14:24 Nilay Patel? Maybe.
14:24 Speaker 01 Feelings.
14:25 Nilay Patel? Okay. The way I structured the show today, just so you know.
14:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
14:29 Nilay Patel? Is we've got this, the Google thing. Uh, we, Nicola has four hundred smartwatches over there that we should talk about. Uh, and then I've, I've added what I, what I consider to be a lightning round.
14:38 Speaker 01 Okay.
14:39 Nilay Patel? It's actually, I've also named it the lightning round. So it's beyond consideration.
14:45 Speaker 01 What else is there to say about Chromeless and Android?
14:47 Nilay Patel? There's kind of a lot, I feel like. I don't know. So we, you've been reviewing tons of phones lately.
14:52 Speaker 02 Uh, yes.
14:53 Nilay Patel? Uh, the whole site has been reviewing tons of phones lately. Um, where's Android at right now?
14:59 Speaker 02 Uh, I, I can't really say that like Android's in a different place now than it would have been a year ago. It's still the same, the, it's still the same thing where the best Android experience is on Nexus devices, which, uh, come with their own limitations and things like that. I will say that, uh,
15:17 Speaker 02 The Nexus devices of today are much better than Nexus devices have ever been before in the respect that you can go and buy a Nexus device without a huge compromise. It used to be like a year ago, or even two years ago, or however long, if you were buying a Nexus device, you were compromising the camera, you're compromising the battery, you're compromising somewhere where like if you went and bought Samsung's best phone, or HTC's best phone at the time, you got a better experience on those levels, but the Nexus gave you the best software. So now we have Nexus phones have the best software, they've got really great cameras, great battery life, et cetera, et cetera. But they're still like niche products, niche things. It's like, that's not changed. So, uh, you know, state of Android is kind of the same.
15:58 Speaker 01 Here's my question about this merging. If Android is not powerful like enough, or it has, I don't know, the wrong model, I think, and we haven't seen it on processors powerful enough to run full desktop class Chrome, the way that you see Chrome on Chrome OS, right? Like, that thing is a heavy beast of an app, and I don't know that Android could lift it. And that, but then on the flip side, when you look at the kind of processors and stuff that Chrome OS typically runs on, whether it be ARM or x86, is that power efficient enough to like shrink down, put Android on top of it and put it on a phone? I don't think so. So like, for me, the biggest question is like fundamentally, um, what underpinning work do they have to do to make this happen?
16:41 Speaker 02 Right.
16:42 Speaker 01 And if Android ends up being the base, uh, we need to see how it runs on like comparable Intel hardware, which is why I'm incredibly interested to see what the Pixel C does. Android also needs, uh, I don't know, windowing, or split screen, or something, uh, built into it.
16:57 Speaker 02 Something that works over on a screen bigger than seven inches.
16:59 Speaker 01 I mean, the state of Android is, um, actually not the same as it ever was insofar as like, uh, the, like Samsung's not making money hand over fist on it anymore.
17:09 Speaker 02 Right.
17:09 Speaker 01 So like, uh, who's making money on Android? Right?
17:13 Speaker 02 I mean, Samsung, Samsung is still making money, it's just they are making less money than before, which is like terrible for the stock market.
17:19 Speaker 01 Right.
17:19 Speaker 02 So, uh, but yeah, I mean, they're, they're, they're not selling their high-end devices like they used to, and people aren't buying them, and it's a bummer, because it's the best products they've ever made, but, um... Yeah, who's making money off of Android is an excellent question. Is Google really making money off of Android? Google makes money off of search. They might make a token thing off of Android.
17:39 Speaker 01 I bet they make money off Android.
17:40 Nilay Patel? But that's why they should make phones.
17:42 Speaker 01 Right.
17:43 Nilay Patel? Or tablets or whatever. Like, I don't know. Would you buy a Google laptop over an Apple laptop?
17:49 Speaker 03 Nah.
17:49 Nilay Patel? Why? Why?
17:52 Speaker 03 Actually, I did use that Chromebook one day.
17:54 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
17:55 Speaker 03 Dieter saved me.
17:56 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:57 Speaker 03 And it was fine experience. A little bit to get used to, but it was fine overall.
18:02 Speaker 01 You didn't know it had a touchscreen, as I recall.
18:04 Speaker 03 Oh, no. It took hours before that was revealed to me by me. Um, no, because I'm used, I don't know, because I'm used to this thing and it works good. It's fast.
18:15 Nilay Patel? Yeah. Like, I'm ready. Am I the only one? I'm like, I've had this stuff for so long. It's worked basically the same for so long.
18:24 Speaker 01 You gonna buy a Surface Book?
18:26 Nilay Patel? Well, we found out today that Windows destroys our calendars.
18:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
18:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's.
18:33 Nilay Patel? So we, as the viewer, listener, whoever you are, however you wish to consume us, um, it's a ridiculous phrase, uh, may know, we run our app, our business on Google Apps. We have a lot of Windows 10 devices floating around. We plug them in, we plug them in, we plug them into those Google Apps, uh, and they've just been destroying our lives. Like, I don't, there's no easier way to piss off 50 people worldwide than to just change every calendar entry across three calendars.
19:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
19:05 Nilay Patel? Just move around, back and forth by an hour. When's the features meeting? I don't know. Is it 3 o'clock? Is it 5 o'clock? Is it canceled? Who the hell knows?
19:12 Speaker 01 Well, when those.
19:13 Nilay Patel? Windows 10 does it. That's why it keeps fucking it up.
19:16 Speaker 01 And then other programs, and I don't know which, are randomly like sending updates that mean nothing. They don't change the calendar, but I would say two or three times a day, like a random staff member sends me an email about a calendar appointment that neither of us are actually going to. I just get the email.
19:29 Nilay Patel? And then because it looks intentional, because it's emailed, people reply to the email, other snippy emails, like, literally Walt just sent Tom an email that was like, the tech meeting is not at 1pm, Tom. And Tom was like, sorry.
19:38 Speaker 02 I've gotten a lot of those emails, because it's, it's, because. The reality is that Tom and myself are the ones that use the most Windows devices because we're constantly testing them and reviewing them and whatever. So frequently, the calendar rearrangement appears to come from my email address.
19:56 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
19:56 Speaker 02 And I get emails back from Liz, who's ready to bite my head off the next time the science meeting moves.
20:02 Nilay Patel? Literally.
20:02 Speaker 02 Literally.
20:03 Nilay Patel? The note was, Dan has never been to the science meeting. Why did he change? Like, it's destroying our lives. Like, I think of the verge as a family, as a cohesive unit, as a team, as, you know, it's us against the world, you know, whatever. It's us against Mashable forever, you know? But we need, we need our bonds to stay strong. And Windows 10 is just tearing at the fabric of our society.
20:27 Speaker 03 This is so funny because we're the same company, but obviously on Ract, like, we haven't had this problem at all because everyone has an iPhone.
20:33 Nilay Patel? Oh, if you want to, if you want to take over Ract, you know what you do? You divide and conquer by giving one person a Windows phone. Just literally tear it apart. People will be like, what happened to Ract? It was so promising, it was growing, it had all this talent. And you'd be like, well, Nikola introduced Windows 10.
20:52 Speaker 03 Nikola got interested in tech and bought this weird phone.
20:55 Speaker 02 Nikola had to have that Surface Book.
20:57 Speaker 03 She had this stupid mission, Operation Something, I don't know.
21:02 Speaker 02 So we have to do more research on what the hell is causing this.
21:05 Nilay Patel? Sure.
21:06 Speaker 02 But it appears to be the native calendar app on Windows 10, which is what you sign into when you use the native mail app on Windows 10. It is having all kinds of sync issues with Google Apps accounts.
21:15 Nilay Patel? But it moves, it moves, it moves appointments that you didn't create, but you are going to an hour later.
21:22 Speaker 02 Yes.
21:22 Nilay Patel? Consistently.
21:23 Speaker 02 Which might be related to daylight savings time, who knows?
21:26 Nilay Patel? Right, but it doesn't do it by you interacting with it, it just does it.
21:29 Speaker 02 Just does it.
21:29 Nilay Patel? Just because.
21:30 Speaker 02 When it feels like it.
21:33 Nilay Patel? You know, whether I'm designing, presenting, writing, or building, Dropbox makes it simple to work together on any file.
21:39 Speaker 01 And it doesn't mess up your calendar.
21:41 Nilay Patel? Now, we're just making promises. Over 400 people, 400 people, 400 people use Dropbox.
21:50 Speaker 03 Like 400, 4500?
21:52 Speaker 01 Technically true.
21:53 Nilay Patel? 470 people use Dropbox around the world.
21:56 Speaker 03 Around the world.
21:58 Nilay Patel? Who knew? Over 400 million people around the world already use Dropbox. And now, I mean, ring the alarm, there's Dropbox just for your business. Dropbox for Business helps you work the way you want to work. All the things you love about Dropbox with enterprise-grade security and administrative controls to help your team work together on any file type, on any device, simply and securely. If you could move your calendars on Windows to Dropbox, that would be great. Customizable sharing controls like expiration dates and passwords for shared links are dope. That's not a sentence, Dropbox PR people, think about it. Dropbox for Business enables your entire team to work the way they want to work, any file, from anywhere. What do I like the best about Dropbox? Do you like anything about Dropbox?
22:38 Speaker 01 I like a lot of things about Dropbox.
22:39 Nilay Patel? Yeah, it's pretty good.
22:40 Speaker 01 Yeah, I like, I like how it automatically syncs my files and makes it relatively easy to share stuff.
22:44 Nilay Patel? There you go. Yeah, it's good. Anyway, look, over 100 businesses, over 100,000 businesses already use Dropbox for Business. Dropbox for Business, it's all yours, Dan Seifert.
22:55 Speaker 02 Yes, we are, we are actually one of those companies that use it.
22:58 Nilay Patel? We do.
22:58 Speaker 02 Box Media.
22:59 Nilay Patel? We do, for moving files.
23:01 Speaker 02 Moving files? Syncing stuff.
23:03 Nilay Patel? We should get Dropbox for Business.
23:05 Speaker 03 We have it.
23:06 Nilay Patel? Oh, do we?
23:07 Speaker 03 Yeah, dude.
23:08 Nilay Patel? See, the thing about figureheads.
23:09 Speaker 02 Unlimited storage.
23:10 Nilay Patel? I don't do anything. I do some slacking, I do some pointing.
23:13 Speaker 03 I went to the Dropbox. I prioritized the Dropbox party at South by Southwest because I was like, I love Dropbox so much, I want to party with it.
23:20 Nilay Patel? Wow, see, that should have been in the.
23:22 Speaker 03 That should, there's that.
23:23 Nilay Patel? How do you party with Dropbox?
23:25 Speaker 01 How do you party without Dropbox?
23:27 Speaker 03 I, I mean.
23:27 Nilay Patel? This is ridiculous.
23:28 Speaker 02 You sync a playlist across a shared folder.
23:32 Speaker 01 Guys, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna verge cast in a t-shirt. It is fricking hot in here.
23:36 Nilay Patel? Yeah, it was so nice and cool in here.
23:39 Speaker 01 Also, my t-shirt doesn't match my overshirt. It's gray, which is inappropriate to a red shirt.
23:44 Speaker 03 No, Nilay is still unbuttoned.
23:46 Speaker 01 I got the, I got the western buttons. I just like ripped it open.
23:49 Speaker 03 Dan's the only one left.
23:50 Nilay Patel? Yeah. Don't make that move, Dan.
23:52 Speaker 02 Nope. Stand firm.
23:55 Speaker 01 Wow, it's way cooler with just your buttons open.
23:58 Nilay Patel? This is ridiculous.
23:59 Speaker 03 The case being.
23:59 Nilay Patel? Let's talk about smartwatches.
24:01 Speaker 02 This is super compelling audio content.
24:02 Speaker 03 Fashion tech right here.
24:03 Nilay Patel? It's, I mean, which is more, we could talk about shirts all day, or Nikola could do that fashion tech.
24:09 Speaker 02 Amir Frawdy.
24:10 Speaker 03 A lot of that.
24:10 Speaker 01 Amir Frawdy at The Information says, just posted an article that says that Google recently talked with some microchip makers about developing chips based on Google's own preferred designs.
24:20 Nilay Patel? That makes sense. I mean, that's just like increased verticalization. Like, Apple makes its own chips. It feels like everybody has to make their own chips.
24:27 Speaker 01 Yep.
24:28 Nilay Patel? I, I, I, there's no way we can ever, ever remember this bet, but I would bet you five years now Google's fully making its own hardware.
24:36 Speaker 01 They, they are now and like, we're pretending.
24:40 Nilay Patel? Yeah, it's like the pixel, the chroma pixel and pixel C, great, but like, I mean, they're in the market head to head with Apple, their own phones, their own laptops, like fully, fully integrated and fully consumer.
24:51 Speaker 01 Yeah. Did you see that story about one of the engineers for Pixel?
24:54 Nilay Patel? Cause, cause that basically means that they will, Google will kill Sony and Samsung and whoever else uses their operating, I mean, like, they'll be head to head with their own OEMs, which has never worked in the history of the world.
25:06 Speaker 03 Why?
25:07 Speaker 02 Yeah, Microsoft is dealing with it right now.
25:10 Nilay Patel? Why is such a really good question? It's like, because Google, well, Microsoft is actually the best example. And so Microsoft makes Windows, their business for years and years and years was selling Windows to like Dell and Lenovo and HP. And they made the hardware and Microsoft made the software. The second Microsoft started making hardware, they started outclassing their hardware vendors. And the hardware vendors were doing dumb things, like trying to make software as well. So they would like add really bad software on top of Windows. So when you bought a cheap Dell laptop, it would come loaded with garbage. Because that's how they competed to differentiate Windows. But Microsoft like now makes the Surface and the Surface Book and they are objectively better than many of the computers from their own hardware vendors.
25:51 Nilay Patel? And so if you're a hardware vendor, you're like, why am I competing with the provider of my software? And you walk away. And so the most famous example of this, which Dieter can probably tell you all about is Palm, which used to be a company called Palm.
26:05 Nilay Patel? Dieter's gonna get another beer.
26:09 Nilay Patel? So there was a company called Palm that made the original Palm Pilot and it's split into two companies, one called Palm One and one called Palm Source. Palm Source was going to be a software company for a whole world of cool Palm devices that ran the Palm OS.
26:20 Speaker 01 One of which was a company in Iowa called Handango, which made a Palm Pilot that had a little expandable memory slot.
26:27 Nilay Patel? Oh my, this is such a saga. And then another one, there was Handango and there was Handspring.
26:31 Speaker 01 Handspring created by the original founders of Palm who were mad at Palm for being bad at their jobs.
26:37 Nilay Patel? Yeah, so Palm split, the original founders quit, started Handspring. And then Palm One bought Handspring back. So the founders came back and then they recombined it with Palm Source.
26:53 Speaker 01 Yep.
26:54 Nilay Patel? And then somewhere along the line, they split that off and sold it to a company called Access. I mean, it was like a disaster, like at every possible level of this plan, it was a disaster.
27:05 Nilay Patel? There's something important about the visor that I'm trying to think of. The Handspring visor was a really important product for a specific.
27:12 Speaker 01 The Handspring visor was an important product for a specific reason because it was designed to take the basis of like a PDA and show that you could modularize stuff so that you could eventually make a phone.
27:24 Nilay Patel? It became the trio.
27:25 Speaker 01 It became the trio.
27:26 Nilay Patel? Right. So when Palm wanted to go into making phones, they made some of the first ever smartphones by buying Handspring, their old founders, and became Palm.
27:34 Speaker 01 Right. By the way, one of the reasons Handspring couldn't stay independent is they bought too much real estate.
27:40 Speaker 01 They got a swank ass headquarters and they're like, oh, we need to sell more phones. This is awkward.
27:49 Nilay Patel? Oh, my God. Anyhow, all like while all of that is happening, like Sony is licensing the software to make arguably the best handhelds ever in the Clee, because they were the coolest.
28:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, they never made a phone out of that.
28:02 Nilay Patel? They made a phone, but they made the coolest ones. And all of this was just a wreck, like just wreckage, like industry wreckage left and right. And somewhere in there, like many phones are made and Dieter began a career.
28:14 Speaker 01 Yep. Yeah, actually, I, I started my career a little over 13 years ago.
28:20 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
28:21 Speaker 01 Writing about the trio.
28:22 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
28:23 Speaker 03 I feel like I learned a little bit about something.
28:27 Speaker 02 Photos, if you know what to Google.
28:28 Speaker 01 What's the point of the story?
28:29 Nilay Patel? The point of the story was that a software vendor trying to compete with its own OEMs by making its own hardware is always a bad idea. And there's so much noise in that ecosystem because everyone's mad at each other all the time that nothing ever moves forward.
28:44 Nilay Patel? And so like Microsoft is facing it right now. Like all of Microsoft's OEM partners are mad, like Lenovo is mad, Dell's mad, whatever. They're all mad because Microsoft made its first laptop.
28:51 Speaker 01 Yeah, but I think Microsoft is going to solve that problem by not caring.
28:56 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
28:57 Speaker 01 That's like how they're, that's how they're gonna fix that.
28:59 Nilay Patel? Unless Google shows up and makes an operating system and says to vendors, like, hey, you can pick this one, too.
29:04 Speaker 01 Yeah.
29:05 Nilay Patel? And we're still gonna make hardware, too. But now you have, now you have a choice of like, which bad deal are you gonna take?
29:10 Speaker 01 Right.
29:12 Nilay Patel? But if Google like starts making its own phone and marketing heavily against Samsung, like no one will buy a Samsung phone. Like they will kill Samsung's mobile business.
29:18 Speaker 02 I mean, Apple's already killing Samsung's mobile business. So like, Google would just like put the knife into the body that's like fallen on the ground.
29:26 Nilay Patel? Poor Samsung. Body on the ground, just bleeding S apps and services. Just can't do it.
29:36 Speaker 01 Wow.
29:37 Nilay Patel? And the S6 and the Note 5 are great.
29:38 Speaker 02 I bought one. I spent hundreds of dollars on one because it is the best product that they've ever made.
29:43 Nilay Patel? Case that looks like a checkbook.
29:45 Speaker 02 Uh, cause uh, this is my dad case.
29:48 Nilay Patel? It'd be amazing if you could open it up and like write a check on the screen and then like printed a checkout.
29:53 Speaker 02 So I could, in theory, because I have the S Pen. So I open it up.
29:57 Nilay Patel? If you guys ever wanted to hear like the ultimate in Samsung branded content, it's Dan saying, I could write a check on my Galaxy Note because I have the S Pen.
30:10 Nilay Patel? We should get money for that. That was an unprompted use of the phrase S Pen.
30:14 Speaker 02 Yeah, unprompted.
30:16 Nilay Patel? Did you see the post we did about the Ariana Grande video with the Note 5?
30:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, the, the Note 5 commercial slash.
30:21 Nilay Patel? That is some of the worst product placement I've ever seen in my life.
30:24 Speaker 01 It's unbelievable.
30:25 Speaker 02 She also has far better handwriting on a Note 5 than I do.
30:29 Speaker 03 Oh my God, I can't wait to watch it.
30:30 Nilay Patel? Uh, it's for Focus, the new track Focus. Have you heard or seen this?
30:34 Speaker 02 There's literally a shot of like her standing in a circular room and the camera goes around and she's just taking selfies with the.
30:40 Nilay Patel? Well, all the people take photos of her in a circle and she's like, it's like ridiculous.
30:45 Speaker 02 It's like all, all pretense of a plot goes right out the window.
30:48 Nilay Patel? And I would say Caitlin Tiffany's post on our side about this thing is one of the best things we've published this month.
30:54 Speaker 02 It's pretty hot fire.
30:54 Nilay Patel? All right, all right. We.
30:55 Speaker 01 Smart watches.
30:56 Nilay Patel? We're so far from smart watches. All right, Nicola, you've got, you reviewed the Pebble Time round.
31:02 Speaker 02 Uh, yeah, yeah, today, actually.
31:03 Nilay Patel? They make a lot of shapes, uh, squares.
31:06 Speaker 02 No, they make circles.
31:07 Speaker 03 No triangles out there. What's this?
31:09 Nilay Patel? Oh, man.
31:09 Speaker 03 Triangle shade, octagon shade.
31:15 Nilay Patel? Why have you arranged a box to display the word Samsung Gear S2? What is happening over there?
31:22 Speaker 03 This is my kiosk, you know? You gave me this, I brought the fern.
31:26 Nilay Patel? Nicola is running a mall kiosk in the corner of the studio.
31:30 Speaker 01 Did we ever figure out the name of the watch mall kiosk store?
31:33 Nilay Patel? No, somebody please tweet at me. There's, there's an opposite of sunglass. Is it, watches the opposite of sunglasses?
31:38 Speaker 02 Sunglass Hut used to sell.
31:39 Nilay Patel? So there's like a pair, like there's Sunglass Hut and then there's the Watch One.
31:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
31:43 Speaker 03 Yeah, the Watch One.
31:44 Nilay Patel? And I cannot for the life of me remember what the Watch One is called. Anyway.
31:48 Speaker 02 I'm gonna throw out the watch connection.
31:51 Nilay Patel? Just out there.
31:51 Speaker 02 Throw it out there.
31:52 Nilay Patel? All right.
31:52 Speaker 03 Nicholas' watch connection. We have nine or something watches here.
31:58 Nilay Patel? All right.
31:58 Speaker 03 And four boxes.
31:59 Nilay Patel? So in addition to doing the Pebble Time, you guys also did a pair of This Is My Next, the best.
32:04 Speaker 02 Well, actually, Mr. Brown did both of them.
32:06 Speaker 01 Right. We did both for iPhone and Android rather than just doing one for both of them.
32:10 Speaker 02 Right.
32:11 Speaker 01 Because the platforms are so different. And I didn't get to include the Pebble Time round in that.
32:15 Speaker 02 Unfortunately, because of embargoes.
32:17 Speaker 01 I don't know if it would have changed my.
32:19 Nilay Patel? It's not Dakota Watches. That's a brand of watches. Three people have said Dakota Watches tonight.
32:23 Speaker 01 It might just be Dakota Watches.
32:24 Nilay Patel? No, that's like saying, what is the sunglass store in the mall? And people are like Ray-Ban. Like, that's not sunglass.
32:29 Speaker 01 Are you sure?
32:29 Nilay Patel? I'm like, pretty sure.
32:30 Speaker 01 All right.
32:31 Nilay Patel? Uh, anyway, so, but you said, obviously, the Apple Watch is the best smartwatch for iOS.
32:35 Speaker 01 I'm Googling Dakota.
32:36 Nilay Patel? And Watch Station. Does that make any sense?
32:39 Speaker 01 Watch Station.
32:40 Speaker 03 Watch Out.
32:41 Nilay Patel? It should be called Watch Out.
32:43 Speaker 01 Uh, yeah. So of course, the Apple Watch is the best for, not of course, actually, not at all, of course. The Apple Watch is the best for the iPhone.
32:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
32:49 Speaker 01 Um, and I think that, um, the best Android Wear watch is the best thing for Android. And I think for me, the best Android Wear watch is the Moto 360, the 2015 edition.
33:00 Nilay Patel? Right. But then you say it might be the Pebble Round.
33:03 Speaker 02 No, I did not say that.
33:06 Nilay Patel? Times Square. It's called Times Square.
33:10 Speaker 03 Ah, yes, that's so good.
33:13 Speaker 02 Especially if it's a square, if it's a square kiosk in the middle.
33:16 Nilay Patel? DDDDDVYY emoji thing.
33:20 Speaker 03 Shout to you.
33:21 Nilay Patel? You're good at Twitter today. Um, it's called Watch It in Canada.
33:25 Speaker 02 No, I agree. I agree with Dieter's assessment. I think that, uh, so much of the smartwatch as we know it today depends on the platform of your smartphone and the watch that has the same platform as your smartphone tends to be the best experience.
33:37 Nilay Patel? Right.
33:37 Speaker 02 Um, the Pebble Time round is a round Pebble Time, like.
33:42 Speaker 01 No, no, no, no, no. It's a, it's a round ridiculously thin.
33:46 Speaker 02 Yes, there are like other things, but like on a user experience level, it's a round Pebble Time. Like, the experience is exactly the same, except it's now just fit to a round screen.
33:55 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
33:55 Speaker 02 And so like, all of the pros and cons that come with the Pebble platform apply to the Time Round. It's just, it's really cool.
34:02 Nilay Patel? It's good looking.
34:02 Speaker 02 It's, it looks better. It's a, it's a step forward.
34:06 Nilay Patel? What do you want a smartwatch to do?
34:09 Nilay Patel? So last week I asked people to tweet at me what their favorite Apple Watch app is. And like basically everyone was like, I like notifications.
34:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, I think that's what we all know a smart watch to do. And I, I, my, uh, I was, I was thinking before we came on of like, coming up with like, what, what is the state of smart watches right now? And right now, we're still waiting, we're waiting for the next step in smart watches. So we have like Android where an Apple Watch introduced platforms to smart watches in ways like we hadn't seen before. The next step is a smart watch that doesn't need your smartphone. And yes, there have been cellular connected ones in the past.
34:42 Speaker 01 Can't we have a step in between where the apps don't suck?
34:45 Speaker 02 I mean, we can.
34:45 Speaker 01 I would like that step.
34:47 Speaker 02 Yeah, but that's just, that's just, that's just iterating on what we already have, right?
34:50 Nilay Patel? Nope, like I, it's like the Apple Watch has this problem and the Apple TV has this problem. Like there, what is, what is the killer app for the Apple Watch? Beyond notifications.
34:59 Speaker 02 I don't think there is one. I think for me, it's the struggle for everything.
35:02 Speaker 01 Straight up, I, I do like, uh, voice commands. I like being able to like lead, like tell my, remind myself of little things.
35:08 Speaker 02 I'm, I'm gonna blow up Dieter's spot because he does this in the office and he sits two seats down from me. And he, he like holds his watch up to his face and he secretly says like, remind me to so and so when I get home.
35:17 Nilay Patel? Oh, my God.
35:17 Speaker 02 And it usually takes him three times.
35:19 Speaker 01 No.
35:21 Speaker 01 The only reason it doesn't work the first time is because I start doing it and Dan is like, oh, you're trying to do it again.
35:27 Nilay Patel? Between Dieter secretly talking to his watch and secretly vaping, he's a supervillain.
35:34 Speaker 01 So if you watch the video for this is my next, and you watch like just the first 45 seconds of it, I'm basically talking you out of buying a smart watch. Like the first 45 seconds are, it'll give you notifications and that's cool, but the apps kind of suck and they're hard to use. And the battery life sucks.
35:48 Nilay Patel? Have you picked a smart watch, Nicola?
35:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
35:50 Speaker 03 I picked one.
35:51 Speaker 01 You've got all these smart watches.
35:52 Nilay Patel? Well, you've got a bunch that we've provided to you. Have you purchased one?
35:55 Speaker 03 No.
35:57 Nilay Patel? Which one is, which one do you like over there?
35:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, what's your favorite over there?
36:00 Speaker 03 I like this one.
36:02 Speaker 01 It's Moto 360.
36:03 Speaker 02 So that is the, yeah, the smaller, new Moto 360.
36:06 Speaker 01 Yeah.
36:07 Speaker 03 Yeah, I like this guy. I think it has a good ratio circle to band. It's substantial, but it's not like wildly big. Like this guy is too much.
36:15 Nilay Patel? What's that one, the Huawei?
36:16 Speaker 02 That's an LG Watch Urbane.
36:18 Speaker 03 Yeah, this is way too much watch.
36:20 Speaker 02 I think Dieter described that watch best when he said it was a cheap watch that's trying to look not cheap, but still looks cheap.
36:26 Nilay Patel? Oh, it's a fossil.
36:27 Speaker 01 Yeah. And then the one next to it is the Huawei watch, which I said it was a watch only Gordon Gekko could love.
36:34 Nilay Patel? Let's see, wait, hold that one up.
36:35 Speaker 02 So that that watch has no style.
36:39 Speaker 03 Yeah, this is just. It helps that they're all dead.
36:44 Speaker 02 Oh, so that's the other story of smart watches is that they die all the time.
36:47 Speaker 01 Except for the pebbles.
36:49 Speaker 02 Well, except for the pebbles. Right.
36:50 Speaker 03 The pebble looks like the pared down version of the.
36:54 Speaker 01 Yeah, the pebble round.
36:55 Speaker 02 Say what you said before we were rolling.
36:57 Speaker 03 Oh, well, so today is the launch of H and M's latest designer collaboration with Balman. And I said that the pebble round is the H and M Balman version of the Balman. Which would be the Moto 360. Oh, I don't like that at all, but I said it.
37:14 Speaker 03 But no, this one just like this, just this pebble one doesn't read like it just, it looks like a toy. This reads as like a.
37:22 Nilay Patel? Product.
37:23 Speaker 03 Yeah.
37:24 Nilay Patel? Not toy.
37:25 Speaker 03 I'm impressed.
37:26 Speaker 01 But the pebble manages to be thin and light and small.
37:29 Speaker 02 Right.
37:30 Speaker 01 I mean, I don't know, I'm, I.
37:31 Speaker 03 It also, I mean, maybe this is on purpose, I guess. It looks like a regular watch.
37:35 Speaker 02 Yeah. So actually I think that's a plus that it looks like a regular watch.
37:40 Speaker 02 Because it's, it's like, there's no tech company logo on it. It doesn't scream gadget on your wrist.
37:49 Speaker 03 Wait.
37:49 Speaker 02 I don't know why.
37:50 Nilay Patel? From across the room.
37:52 Speaker 03 I think I turned music on somewhere.
37:55 Speaker 02 It's still paired to my phone.
37:57 Nilay Patel? You just turned S music on.
37:58 Speaker 01 What?
37:59 Nilay Patel? Again, Samsung Galaxy Note 5.
38:01 Speaker 03 Return to the moon.
38:03 Nilay Patel? Hey, use your S pen to shut that off.
38:06 Speaker 03 I'm sorry, I'm trying to go elsewhere.
38:09 Speaker 02 Preview of the latest Elvai album, which came out last week.
38:11 Nilay Patel? I'm just saying, you can stop it with your S pen.
38:13 Speaker 02 I could stop it with my S pen.
38:15 Nilay Patel? Try no.
38:16 Speaker 02 And then I will get sabotaged by Nicola across the room.
38:18 Speaker 03 Tomorrow at 6 a.m.
38:20 Speaker 02 So that's a great example.
38:21 Nilay Patel? Nicola's just reading your calendar now?
38:22 Speaker 03 Sunrise at 6:33 tomorrow, hide 75.
38:25 Nilay Patel? What are you, wait, Dan, are you wearing an Apple watch?
38:27 Speaker 02 No, so this is the Asus Zen watch two.
38:30 Speaker 01 Comes in two sizes. I think it's ugly.
38:33 Speaker 03 Dan doesn't have any plans on Saturday.
38:36 Nilay Patel? My god. It's brutal.
38:38 Speaker 03 I'll stop, I'll stop, I'll stop.
38:40 Speaker 02 Yes, I put, I put my, uh, social events on my wrist calendar.
38:44 Nilay Patel? Go ahead and change our staff calendar.
38:47 Speaker 01 So you, you, you, you picked your favorite out of all the smartwatches, but is that like
38:51 Nilay Patel? Which is the worst.
38:52 Speaker 01 The things you hate and but like you still hate them all or?
38:55 Speaker 03 I mean, all right, it's like, no, no, no, this is totally a fine object as just an object like not knowing really the innards of this.
39:01 Nilay Patel? She's holding the 360.
39:03 Speaker 03 Yeah, fine object. Um, I still think that like overwhelmingly they're definitely designed for traditionally male tastes and also male sized bodies.
39:13 Speaker 02 So I, I will say that, yes, you are totally right. The flip side of that is those are all review units that we've called into the from the companies and knowing the author that would be reviewing it was probably going to be male. So we picked the male version. So like, uh, the Pebble time round actually comes in a different version that's geared towards women that has a narrower band.
39:34 Nilay Patel? As does the Moto 360.
39:36 Speaker 02 As does the Moto 360. Uh, the, uh, one with a tan strap, if you want to hold that one up, uh, Nicola, that is the Asus Zen watch two. That's, that's the one that's geared towards women.
39:46 Speaker 03 This is my favorite band color.
39:47 Speaker 02 I have the men's version of that on my wrist. That's the women's version, uh, which has a narrower band, smaller face, et cetera. Uh, but yeah, you're totally right. They are all really masculine looking and kind of geared towards men for the most part, unless you can get uh, an alternative women's model. The thing with even with like the Motorola and the Pebble is that yeah, then it band is narrower, but the face of the watch is still the same size. So like it's not dramatically smaller and Lauren, uh, Lauren Good, who, uh, spent some time with the, the women's version of the Motorola, found that it was still pretty clumsy and clunky on her wrist. So.
40:22 Nilay Patel? I don't, I, I just, I'm still struggling to understand what they're for and like, I think that's the problem that
40:28 Speaker 02 I, I think they are for.
40:29 Nilay Patel? Eludes the entire industry. Like what is it for?
40:32 Speaker 02 Yeah, I, I totally agree. You can make, you can make a really easy compelling sales pitch for a smartphone in like two minutes. Why? Every person you know should have a smartphone and what the reasons why they shouldn't are really, really few and far between. You can't make that pitch for a smartwatch, not, not at least where they are now.
40:47 Nilay Patel? Right. And I, it's just weird because. And Nick, you know, we all worked together on the Apple Watch review long ago. However, many years ago that was.
40:57 Speaker 03 February?
40:58 Nilay Patel? Yeah, it was February.
40:59 Speaker 01 So, most of the watches, all of the watches on the table have like come out since the Apple Watch.
41:05 Speaker 03 Oh, really?
41:06 Speaker 01 Like, that, all of those watches are responses to the Apple Watch in some way. Some of them.
41:11 Speaker 02 And, and you know, the biggest response is that I, I see is that they come in two sizes now.
41:16 Nilay Patel? They come in two sizes now, but they're also round, like Android watches are now round, like.
41:19 Speaker 01 Yeah.
41:20 Nilay Patel? Android Wear has turned into a, a platform that's sort of headed towards round displays as a default. And Apple seems very content to push people towards a square display.
41:29 Speaker 03 Yeah, the rectangle is weird to me, or square. I think it's a rectangle. Um.
41:35 Speaker 01 A square is in fact a rectangle, yes.
41:37 Speaker 03 A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle isn't a square.
41:39 Nilay Patel? We've done, we've done a lot of shape conversation on this show today, like circles and squares. We had a, there was a triangle moment, I believe.
41:46 Speaker 03 Don't bring me in if you're not gonna do the geometry.
41:48 Speaker 02 These are like the conversations I have with my four-year-old.
41:52 Nilay Patel? Don't bring me in if you're not gonna do the geometry.
41:55 Speaker 03 Um.
41:56 Nilay Patel? Uh, that's brutal. That's, that's some figurehead shit.
41:59 Speaker 03 Yeah.
41:59 Speaker 02 So that's, that's the 42, right? That's the larger Apple Watch?
42:04 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, but I'm just like, personally, I don't care for the, um, the rectangle, like in general. To me, it's like futuristic in like a weird, bad way.
42:14 Nilay Patel? Wait, so you've been, you were telling me last week, I think, that, um, like, you know, we're past the first Apple Watch moment. It's settled down. You know, Apple hyped this thing is like, that was their big new product last year, right? Like, it was supposed to be the revolution. They haven't released sales figures on it. It feels like it's not everywhere. I don't see a lot of them unless I'm working with rich people.
42:35 Speaker 02 I see a fair, fair amount of them, but that's also because like I notice them.
42:38 Speaker 03 More of them lately.
42:41 Nilay Patel? Apple put them on sale. I don't know if anybody saw this.
42:44 Speaker 03 What?
42:44 Speaker 01 Sort of, yeah.
42:45 Nilay Patel? They were on sale. They, they trial run, did a trial run of a sale where they're $50 off if you bought an iPhone.
42:50 Speaker 01 So if you spent a thousand dollars.
42:52 Nilay Patel? It's like ridiculous. Um, so it's like weird, you know, and like, there's still not a lot of, like, like, we don't get a lot of PR for Apple Watches. Apps, which is a strange phenomenon.
43:02 Speaker 02 Yep.
43:02 Nilay Patel? Right. We just did the Apple TV review. I'm getting inundated with PR for Apple TV apps. And like, who knows, like, maybe that platform will succeed, or maybe it will fail, but like, at least right now, it's in a moment of ascendancy. The Apple Watch appears in my mind to have plateaued.
43:17 Speaker 02 Here's a question.
43:17 Nilay Patel? But then you were telling me, Nicola, that they are now starting to reach out to like fashion sites and like fashion people.
43:23 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, they definitely did a blast of freebies with the fashion ladies. Cause I like remember there was like one day on Instagram where all of a sudden, like every like other editor that I know had like an Instagram of, and it was the exact, the rose gold with the, what I've now learned is called vintage rose watch strap. And someone at Racks got one here, not myself.
43:46 Speaker 03 Maybe they watched the video we did in February. But um, yeah, like clearly there was like gifting involved. And then like a few weeks later, maybe two weeks later, there was the Chloe seven yay ads that they ran on Instagram, 15 second ads. Chloe seven yay, like trying on lots of different outfits and having different watches to go with them.
44:06 Speaker 02 That they're running those 15 second ads on TV. And it's like, I, I was just gonna say, I think that the ads for the Apple Watch have been like the worst ads that Apple's produced in two or three years.
44:16 Nilay Patel? Cause they don't know what it does.
44:17 Speaker 02 They don't, and like, there's these super short, like 15, maybe 30 second ads that like, like don't convey anything about the product, about like,
44:27 Speaker 03 You know, when you see like a, like an iPhone billboard and it's just really like a sexy graphic image of an iPhone. Do you know what I mean? It's just like, it's in perspective and it doesn't show it doing anything. It just shows it as an object. And I've noticed that they don't do that with the watch. There's no advertising where it's just like, like a traditional watch ad, like for a non-smart watch, it's just like a person doing something glamorous that you want to be part of. It's like perfume ads where like, cause you can't smell it. So it's like they create an idea of like what this person is or what this life is. And it's weird to me with Apple Watch that they haven't stopped and done like, just like a, it's a sexy, beautiful thing on a sexy, beautiful person doing something sexy and beautiful. It's all this like, a mom was stressed out with ice cream. Who can pay?
45:15 Speaker 03 If there's no like romantic, like no one's on a yacht, you know, why not?
45:20 Speaker 02 They did some of that at the very beginning, I want to say.
45:23 Nilay Patel? Well, there's they did in the beginning. They're like, here's what I can do. I think the problem that all of these vendors are stuck in is that these things are most useful when you're busy doing something else.
45:32 Speaker 02 Right.
45:33 Nilay Patel? Right. They're most useful when you don't have time to pick up your phone, but it's like phone advertising. The promise of the phone is it will like grant you additional capabilities, right? You get a phone and suddenly you can like book an Airbnb and go to a glamorous place or like look at Twitter and have people talk to you in curt, unprofessional tones. You know, you can like open Facebook and like.
45:56 Speaker 02 You can video chat with somebody across the world.
45:58 Nilay Patel? Yeah, that's better than opening Facebook. Opening Facebook is like, oh, everyone I know from my school is still terrible. Um, my Facebook's weird. But it's with the watch, it's like, it doesn't grant you that many additional capabilities, right? Like it's just a.
46:11 Speaker 02 It tells you the time.
46:12 Nilay Patel? It tells you the time and then it it connects and then it connects to all the capabilities of your phone. So like you have, all those ads have to be about how somebody else already has a better life and they're like so cool that the watch is like helping them do something that they would do with their phone. There's like a disconnect there because the watch doesn't help them get that life. The watch is like, they're so much cooler than you that they need this watch to like.
46:35 Speaker 02 Or.
46:36 Nilay Patel? Push this button.
46:36 Speaker 02 They're so cool. They're Lagerfelding and they haven't even set up the watch.
46:40 Nilay Patel? Lagerfelding for days, brah. Days. Ah, it's so good.
46:46 Speaker 03 Best. Um, really the best.
46:49 Nilay Patel? I mean, do you think Karl Lagerfeld has ever set up that watch?
46:51 Speaker 03 No.
46:51 Speaker 02 Do you think Karl Lagerfeld has ever used a smartphone?
46:53 Speaker 03 Like a special person, like someone like specially went there and was all nervous and packed and stressed out. And you know what I mean? Like they, they went through this whole thing and then they got there and they just, no.
47:03 Speaker 02 They probably like put it on his wrist, took the picture.
47:06 Nilay Patel? What would it take for you to buy a smart watch? Like what would have to happen?
47:09 Speaker 03 Uh, what would have to happen?
47:13 Speaker 02 Do you wear a non-smartwatch ever?
47:15 Speaker 03 No, but I wear bracelets.
47:17 Nilay Patel? So do I.
47:19 Speaker 02 I mean, that's essentially what that is.
47:21 Nilay Patel? Yeah, a longer felted smartwatch is a bracelet. And you people made fun of me.
47:26 Speaker 03 It would be cool if I could, sometimes, one thing.
47:31 Nilay Patel? Oh, my God, what are you doing?
47:32 Speaker 03 One thing that takes a lot of time is queuing up the song I'm in the mood for. You know what I mean?
47:37 Speaker 02 Why don't you play it on my?
47:39 Nilay Patel? You could just talk to your watch.
47:40 Speaker 03 But it's on Spotify. So I can't be like.
47:43 Nilay Patel? You should pay for every single music service, even the ones you don't use.
47:46 Speaker 02 That's what I do.
47:47 Nilay Patel? Except for Google Play Music, which I refuse to use.
47:49 Speaker 02 I.
47:51 Nilay Patel? I pay for it. YouTube Red, best one they've ever made for.
47:53 Speaker 03 I was on a vacation with a friend and we had a car.
47:56 Speaker 02 Do I have YouTube Red? I have no idea.
47:57 Nilay Patel? You should.
47:58 Speaker 02 If you have Play Music, you do.
47:59 Nilay Patel? Okay.
48:00 Speaker 03 Um, I was on vacation with a plugged in friend and he had Google Music. And I was like, oh, look at you. I've never seen this before out in the wild.
48:10 Nilay Patel? I have YouTube Red. Oh, my God, if you go to youtube.com/red and you have it, it just says, straight on the first page, you have YouTube Red. It just tells you.
48:18 Speaker 02 And then it redirects you to a porn site.
48:20 Nilay Patel? Yeah. Uh, when do you think they're gonna release a second Apple Watch?
48:24 Speaker 03 Me?
48:26 Nilay Patel? When's the next one coming?
48:28 Speaker 02 Uh, my guess would be fall 2016.
48:33 Nilay Patel? Yeah, it's a long way away because they just started selling the Hermes.
48:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, I kinda, I kinda like the Hermes. Like the basic Hermes, like as, as basic as Hermes could be with the single, uh, brown leather strap. I think that looks really nice.
48:47 Speaker 03 But isn't it a double strap?
48:49 Speaker 02 You can get the double strap or you can get a cuff, which is like his style. Or you can get the standard brown leather strap, which would make it kinda look like the Motorola.
48:58 Nilay Patel? Yeah, I think they have a long, they have a long way to go before they.
49:01 Speaker 03 What's the pricing on that one?
49:02 Speaker 02 Uh, it starts at 1100, goes up to, I think, 1599.
49:05 Speaker 03 That's dumb.
49:06 Speaker 02 It's a deal.
49:07 Nilay Patel? You know, it's cheaper, though. Soft layer, motherfuckers.
49:12 Nilay Patel? A cloud built for scale. Your business application. Dieter is looking at me like a crazy person. I believe the Softlayer people are in love with my adder reads.
49:23 Speaker 01 By the way, by the way, change your tagline to Softlayer motherfuckers right now.
49:29 Nilay Patel? Your business applications and computational workloads are unique. So you deserve cloud resources that meet your specific needs. Softlayer, one of the only cloud providers that provisions dedicated servers and virtual servers. Otherwise, I believe you all know this now as known as public cloud. This comes from a single seamless platform that's on demand, all connected to the same open API, all connected to a global private network. It scales your workloads up and down quickly. There's ample space for your storage intensive tasks. I mean, honestly, if you're into the cloud, Softlayer is what you're into. Softlayer, an IBM company, is, I believe everybody knows now. IBM uses Softlayer, so if you buy IBM stuff, you get Softlayer on the backend. All of our listeners have the opportunity to get $500 of cloud infrastructure by visiting
50:13 Nilay Patel? softlayer.com/podcast. An additional $500 of Softlayer changes that to softlayer.com/fuckers. Think about it. You can order bare metal servers, virtual servers, storage, networking and security services from your choice of data centers. Softlayer has 24 data centers around the world. All of those servers and services are connected to Softlayer's unique network of networks, which separates public, private and management traffic, ensuring the traffic to and from your cloud infrastructure is traveling efficiently and with attitude. You can automate and control your cloud infrastructure with a granular API or with the easy to use Softlayer customer portal. Please, I beg of you, visit softlayer.com/podcast to get started with your $500 off of service,
50:58 Nilay Patel? storage, network and security on a cloud built to scale from Softlayer.
51:03 Speaker 01 There's a hashtag, by the way.
51:04 Nilay Patel? Oh, no. What have we done?
51:11 Nilay Patel? Sorry. I'm trying, guys.
51:16 Nilay Patel? You know, what are you gonna do?
51:20 Nilay Patel? Alright, it's time for the lightning round.
51:22 Speaker 01 What are the rules of the lightning round?
51:25 Nilay Patel? I'm just gonna say some, some things and you guys can jump in on the things. Does that make any sense? I'm gonna say some topics.
51:32 Speaker 01 Okay.
51:32 Nilay Patel? From the week.
51:33 Speaker 01 But we have to be fast.
51:34 Nilay Patel? Yeah, it's alright, we're gonna move, we're gonna move. I'd like to hear from all of you on said topics, but I'm just gonna throw them out there and you're gonna respond.
51:41 Speaker 01 Okay.
51:41 Nilay Patel? Lightning round. Hearts versus stars on Twitter.
51:43 Speaker 03 Love of hearts.
51:45 Speaker 01 Faves.
51:46 Speaker 02 Faves for life.
51:47 Nilay Patel? Terrible. Terrible.
51:49 Speaker 03 Because a favorite, you can only have one. It makes no sense!
51:53 Speaker 01 Oh, you are validating Twitter's reasoning for changing this.
51:56 Speaker 03 Greatest of all time, it's the worst. I can't stand it.
51:59 Nilay Patel? I, I can't. It's, it's literally a hearts on Twi- like, favoring a super, or putting a heart next to a super sarcastic Casey tweet is so wrong.
52:07 Speaker 01 Yeah.
52:07 Speaker 02 Or like a super terrible AP tweet about like some tragedy.
52:10 Speaker 01 The hearts are treacle, right? They're, it's, it's all just like too sweet.
52:15 Speaker 03 A star is like a little, it's like a punch in the arm, like, yeah, but a heart is like a...
52:19 Speaker 01 No, but a star is like, I'm gonna look at this later. I'm gonna remember this.
52:22 Nilay Patel? New iMacs. It's lightning round. Lightning strikes. Lightning crashes.
52:27 Speaker 02 So, new iMacs, best all ones you can buy, but if you buy the base model, you're an idiot because they give you that really crappy, slow hard drive, so you have to spend a good amount of money to get one.
52:36 Nilay Patel? When is the last time you used a desktop computer?
52:43 Speaker 03 I don't know.
52:44 Speaker 01 My, my, my, uh, new iMac thing is, where the hell is the new cinema display? Come on. Come on. Come on. Cinema display, come on.
52:52 Nilay Patel? Uh, the government does not know how to regulate self-driving cars in Tesla autopilot.
52:57 Speaker 01 Shocker.
52:58 Speaker 02 Yeah.
52:59 Nilay Patel? Do you trust self-driving cars?
53:00 Speaker 03 No. No.
53:03 Speaker 03 What's that?
53:04 Nilay Patel? I totally want that.
53:05 Speaker 03 No way. That's terrible.
53:07 Speaker 02 If I could like.
53:08 Speaker 03 Why don't you just get on the subway?
53:10 Nilay Patel? The subway is not a self-driving car. If I could get, if there was a robot arm that could like pick me up out of bed, place me in a cocoon and the cocoon like shot me down the stairs.
53:21 Speaker 02 Put a blazer on you.
53:22 Nilay Patel? Yeah, and like shot me into a car and I was in the car and the car drove me to work and then an arm picked me up and like shot me upstairs. And then delivered me at my desk.
53:29 Speaker 03 And the whole time your phone can read you scientific articles about how sitting is killing you.
53:34 Nilay Patel? Uh, big Disney deal with PlayStation View, ESPN, ABC, Disney Channel, all on PlayStation streaming. Would you give up a TV for that? Give up cable for that?
53:43 Speaker 02 I don't have cable now.
53:44 Speaker 03 I don't have cable.
53:45 Nilay Patel? Would you sign up for that to get ESPN, ABC?
53:48 Speaker 03 No.
53:49 Nilay Patel? Would you ever sign up for any kind of TV package you get in your life?
53:52 Speaker 03 Um, I mean, I pay for Hulu Plus.
53:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, I was gonna say, you must have Hulu, right?
53:56 Speaker 03 Yeah.
53:57 Nilay Patel? You must have Hulu.
53:58 Speaker 02 Of course she has Hulu. She doesn't have cable, she's gotta have Hulu.
54:00 Speaker 03 I have Hulu Plus and I have Netflix. I'm already paying like almost $20 a month.
54:05 Speaker 01 I think that this View, this View deal makes this, uh, makes View more competitive with Sling TV, like, like closer.
54:14 Nilay Patel? Have you ever heard of any of those products?
54:15 Speaker 03 No.
54:16 Nilay Patel? Yep. That's the problem. They were never gonna spend the money on marketing them. Would you give up?
54:20 Speaker 02 No.
54:21 Nilay Patel? Okay, uh, James Bond Specter.
54:22 Speaker 01 Why aren't you participating in the lightning round?
54:24 Nilay Patel? Cause I'm the, I'm the lightning host.
54:26 Speaker 01 Okay.
54:27 Nilay Patel? Also, hearts are bullshit. Just to be clear, the only contribution to making the lightning round is that I believe hearts are bullshit. Uh, James Bond Specter.
54:34 Speaker 02 Uh, there, a good Bond movie is only a Specter at this point.
54:38 Speaker 01 Really?
54:40 Nilay Patel? Did you prep that? Have you been waiting the whole time to drop that one?
54:44 Speaker 03 Tweet. I think that was a tweet already.
54:46 Speaker 01 I just.
54:47 Speaker 02 I'm researching.
54:48 Speaker 03 I don't know anything about it.
54:48 Nilay Patel? Is James Bond, is it possible for James Bond to be cool again?
54:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
54:52 Speaker 03 Yeah.
54:52 Speaker 02 Totally. Even, even Daniel Craig could be cool again, but not with the scripts and crap that he's given at this point.
54:58 Nilay Patel? I just think it's really hard. I think James Bond is a government agent. I think it is hard for government agents in fiction to be super cool.
55:04 Speaker 01 That's not the problem.
55:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, no, because that was cool in Mission Impossible with government agents.
55:08 Speaker 01 The problem is that James Bond is a misogynist. That's what keeps him from being cool.
55:12 Nilay Patel? I don't think he is one in this one.
55:13 Speaker 01 I've seen it in this one.
55:15 Nilay Patel? He's been doing all these interviews about it.
55:16 Speaker 01 Oh, he's cooler. Okay. Well, then, yeah, sure.
55:19 Nilay Patel? But like, even that, like, I just like, he's an age-
55:21 Speaker 03 It's very out to be a misogynist right now. Very out.
55:24 Nilay Patel? I'm bringing it back, though. So if you could just shut up-
55:27 Speaker 03 I mean, the pendulum swings, you know?
55:28 Nilay Patel? If you could just simmer down-
55:30 Speaker 03 2017, ladies, can it.
55:33 Speaker 01 I haven't seen Spectre. There's been a lot of-
55:37 Nilay Patel? The verge gets super weird in 2017. It's like, could you just go make me a sandwich?
55:43 Speaker 01 The kitchen is in kitchening itself.
55:45 Speaker 02 Wow.
55:47 Nilay Patel? I'm sorry, that shouldn't be funny.
55:49 Speaker 03 It's terrible.
55:50 Speaker 01 There's been a lot of shades around Roger Moore in the aftermath of Spectre and all the bad reviews. And I just want to stand up for Roger Moore. I like him.
55:59 Nilay Patel? Better than Timothy Dalton. I'll give you that one.
56:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
56:02 Nilay Patel? Okay.
56:03 Speaker 01 Not hard.
56:03 Nilay Patel? I just think, I think James Bond is over. Like, I think it has reached its floor.
56:08 Speaker 02 As like a gadget nerd that like totally kills me. Because like James Bond was like, the movie you watch to see all these like crazy, out of this world gadgets.
56:15 Speaker 01 So, hang on. Did you read, did you watch the James Bond gadget supercut that we put on our site?
56:20 Speaker 02 I didn't see that.
56:21 Speaker 01 Uh, so, like, the supercut's great. It's like 17 minutes of a gadget, whatever, whatever. Uh, but, uh, James Vincent, our genius writer in the UK, uh, decided to just name five of the gadgets in this supercut. And listen to the names of these gadgets and try not to think of a disturbing sex act. Mousetrap in the pocket.
56:43 Speaker 02 Come on.
56:44 Speaker 01 Head smashing plaster cast.
56:46 Nilay Patel? What?
56:47 Speaker 01 Fake horse ass. There's a flame- Flamethrower bagpipes. And person swallowing sofa.
56:57 Nilay Patel? Flamethrower bagpipes, uh, my monster truck name. Just putting that out there. Okay, uh, running around. Time Warner showing fewer ads to attract cord cutters back to television. If you could buy cable and it would have fewer ads across the board, would you go back to TV?
57:15 Nilay Patel? Yep, that's the answer.
57:16 Speaker 01 Time Warner took a-
57:17 Speaker 02 I would enjoy it as a person that still has cable.
57:20 Speaker 01 Time Warner took a beautiful little Greek pastry shop that was on my corner, ripped it down and replaced it with a giant, huge, 20,000 square foot Time Warner store. Doesn't need to exist. Time Warner is a phone number. It's not a store.
57:33 Speaker 02 What do you buy at a Time Warner store?
57:34 Speaker 01 Exactly. It was a lovely little restaurant and now it's like a glass cube where like you talk to a cable rep.
57:41 Nilay Patel? What happens in there?
57:43 Speaker 01 Get the hell out of a store at Time Warner.
57:46 Speaker 03 There was a DJ at the bedside T-Mobile store and I will tell you, it was lit. It was lit.
57:53 Speaker 03 At the T-Mobile store.
57:55 Speaker 01 There's a point in every-
57:56 Speaker 03 They have store experience. You don't know what they're doing there Friday 5pm.
58:00 Speaker 02 There's a point in every New Yorker's life when New York dies for them.
58:02 Nilay Patel? It's a DJ at T-Mobile store.
58:05 Speaker 02 Dieter had died when the street restaurant was taken over by Time Warner.
58:08 Nilay Patel? Tony Fadell says Apple's been thinking about a car since 2008.
58:12 Speaker 03 We've all been thinking about things since 2008. I have no context.
58:15 Speaker 01 Cars, cars are-
58:17 Nilay Patel? Would you buy an Apple car?
58:17 Speaker 01 Are an area of intense interest.
58:18 Speaker 03 A what?
58:19 Nilay Patel? Would you buy an Apple car?
58:20 Speaker 03 Probably. Based on things have gone so far.
58:24 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
58:24 Speaker 03 It's not unlikely.
58:25 Nilay Patel? Okay. And now, now, wait, do you have a lightning hour response to Apple Car?
58:29 Speaker 02 Uh, not, not especially.
58:30 Nilay Patel? All right. So then I asked for questions from Twitter. We have, I would say two minutes.
58:35 Speaker 03 Ooh, fun.
58:35 Nilay Patel? Okay. Um, Bob asks, what's your biggest tech purchase regret?
58:40 Speaker 01 Regret?
58:41 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
58:42 Speaker 01 Uh, there's so many.
58:43 Speaker 02 Google Nexus 4.
58:44 Nilay Patel? Nexus 4?
58:45 Speaker 02 Yeah. I hated it the day I got it.
58:47 Speaker 03 I just bought this alarm clock that wakes you up with simulated daylight.
58:52 Speaker 01 Oh, I got it. Nexus 9.
58:54 Nilay Patel? Okay. And you're going simulated daylight.
58:56 Speaker 01 Was it the Philips one?
58:58 Speaker 03 Yes.
58:58 Speaker 01 Yes, it's terrible.
58:59 Speaker 03 Why?
59:00 Speaker 01 It's so bad. I bought that too.
59:02 Speaker 03 I've never done a return there.
59:04 Nilay Patel? Okay. Peter asks, how much would Sprint have to pay you to use Sprint?
59:09 Speaker 01 How much is Sprint worth as a company? That much.
59:13 Nilay Patel? Would you switch to Sprint? Do you have Sprint? I bet you have Sprint.
59:15 Speaker 03 Verizon.
59:16 Nilay Patel? Oh, well, so not the opposite of Sprint. How much did Sprint have to pay you to switch?
59:20 Speaker 03 I don't know. What's the reputation? It's bad?
59:23 Speaker 01 It's not good.
59:24 Speaker 03 No, I love, I love having a phone that works where I am all the time.
59:28 Nilay Patel? That's so now, now we've moved right into Verizon branded content.
59:32 Speaker 02 Uh, I don't know. I've been kind of using Project Five lately, which is almost Sprint.
59:36 Nilay Patel? It's the worst lightning round in history. It, Klement asks, if you could voluntarily replace your heart with something better, would you? I have no idea what that means, but I love it.
59:45 Speaker 02 Yes.
59:45 Speaker 03 Love my heart.
59:47 Speaker 02 Ah, yeah, totally.
59:47 Speaker 03 I think that was a heart star. Like, that's what we were supposed to go there.
59:51 Nilay Patel? Uh, and then the last one, I guess, I don't.
59:53 Speaker 03 I think that's what you're supposed to do.
59:54 Nilay Patel? I would replace my heart with a star. Yes. If that was, if that was possible.
59:58 Speaker 02 It's a meme.
59:59 Nilay Patel? And then somehow I favorited Ellis reminding me that Tom has been screwing up our calendar with Windows phones for years. So that's where I'm at. This is your last chance. If you have a Twitter question, tweet at me now.
1:00:10 Speaker 02 Do you remember when Tom was like using Windows 8 a lot and would send email replies and break the entire thread?
1:00:16 Nilay Patel? Yes.
1:00:16 Speaker 01 Yes, that was the worst.
1:00:17 Nilay Patel? Oh, if Windows is known for one thing, it's, it's, it's destroying email threads with blue text.
1:00:21 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:00:22 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
1:00:23 Nilay Patel? But somewhere there's a designer at Microsoft who's like, emails should be blue.
1:00:25 Speaker 01 Oh, and.
1:00:26 Nilay Patel? And that person like doomed a generation.
1:00:28 Speaker 01 It's also known for, uh, instead of sending a smiley face in email, it turning it into a capital J.
1:00:34 Speaker 02 That's, that's actually Outlook.
1:00:36 Speaker 01 The J is the worst thing.
1:00:37 Speaker 02 Specifically Outlook, yeah.
1:00:38 Speaker 03 Yes, because every PR person uses Outlook. So they'll be like, can you make it J? And I'm like, what? It took me like a year of this working in this industry to like figure out.
1:00:49 Speaker 01 You reply and tell them that they're sending them and they're like, what are you talking about?
1:00:52 Speaker 03 Why don't they know?
1:00:53 Speaker 01 They don't know. None of them know.
1:00:55 Speaker 03 I hate the J.
1:00:57 Speaker 01 Can't stand the J.
1:00:59 Nilay Patel? There's a hundred people out there just nicknamed J being like, just dying right now. Uh, all right. Uh, so that was our show.
1:01:06 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:01:08 Speaker 03 J.
1:01:08 Nilay Patel? A good time. Brought to you by the letter J.
1:01:12 Speaker 03 And triangles.
1:01:13 Nilay Patel? And triangles.
1:01:14 Speaker 02 Shape of the day.
1:01:15 Speaker 01 Triangle.
1:01:16 Nilay Patel? Dan shamelessly shilling for his stylus.
1:01:20 Nilay Patel? Many smartwatches.
1:01:22 Speaker 02 Let me get the tap guys.
1:01:23 Nilay Patel? And also brought to you.
1:01:27 Nilay Patel? Okay, it would be dope if you could open that and write a check. Like, just if you could write a check and like, print it out and hand that to the waiter at the restaurant. Like, that's a vision of the future that never came true.
1:01:36 Speaker 01 You need a little tiny printer. But you could like...
1:01:39 Speaker 02 What was that little printer?
1:01:40 Speaker 01 And then hand the...
1:01:41 Speaker 02 It was called Little...
1:01:41 Nilay Patel? It was called a little printer.
1:01:45 Speaker 03 Sounds great.
1:01:46 Nilay Patel? But how cool would that be if you were like, "Oh yeah, you know what? I will buy this car."
1:01:49 Speaker 02 Could you imagine?
1:01:50 Nilay Patel? And you like, write the check on your phone.
1:01:51 Speaker 02 That was the future of mobile payments.
1:01:53 Nilay Patel? Writing checks.
1:01:54 Speaker 02 Writing checks and printing out of the smartphone.
1:01:57 Nilay Patel? I'm saying, there's a vision. There's probably like, an old AT&T ad where that's happening. That's the future.
1:02:02 Speaker 01 Oh, it's too...
1:02:03 Nilay Patel? All right, please, uh, follow The Verge on Twitter. We're at Verge. You can follow us on Snapchat at, uh, TheRealVerge. TheRealVerge on Snapchat.
1:02:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, that.
1:02:12 Nilay Patel? Nicola has a captivating Snapchat channel.
1:02:14 Speaker 03 Nicola Fumo, all one word.
1:02:16 Nilay Patel? You can also rate and review us on iTunes. Uh, you can answer any of the lightning questions. If you could replace your heart with something better, what would you replace it with? Answer that question on iTunes, give us five stars. Uh, you can also listen to Verge ESP with Emily and Liz. You can listen to What's Tech, uh, with Chris Plant. You can listen to Control Walt Delete, um, with the captivating Walt Mossberg. Uh, all of that is at iTunes.com/TheVerge. We're also on YouTube, uh, and then you can find all of us at Twitter. And I know that we love it when you tweet at us. Nicola...
1:02:43 Speaker 03 Nicola underscore Fumo.
1:02:45 Nilay Patel? Dieter...
1:02:46 Speaker 01 Backlon.
1:02:46 Nilay Patel? I'm reckless.
1:02:47 Speaker 02 DC Seifert.
1:02:49 Nilay Patel? That was it. I want to thank...
1:02:51 Speaker 01 Brain Tree.
1:02:52 Nilay Patel? Uh, Brain Tree, once again. I was gonna say another swear word, but I think that's, that's, that's, that's for Softlayer.
1:02:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
1:02:58 Nilay Patel? Brain Tree gives you a full stack payment solution. You can support all the payment types your customers might want, except for a printing check side of your Galaxy S5, or Galaxy Note 5. You can start accepting Android Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal, Bitcoin, Venmo, cards, whatever's next. All the single integration across all of your platforms. There's superior fraud protection, there's customer service, there's fast payouts. My God, check this out. At BrainTreePayments.com/VergeCast. That was it. That was the show. Thank you so much. Thank you, Nicola.
1:03:24 Speaker 03 Thanks for having me.
1:03:25 Nilay Patel? Rockin' all.
1:03:25 Speaker 01 Jeff Hawkins.
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