The Vergecast - AirPods 2 review, AirPower gone, and all the things Google killed

Episode Date: April 5, 2019

Apple cancelled AirPower! But they released AirPods 2. The Verge's Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Paul Miller discuss what Apple's next move is as well as what their competitor Google is cancelling too. There's a whole lot more so keep listening for Paul's weekly segment "A jaunty nega-notch", an AirPod competitor, and more 5G updates.  Stories discussed this week:The Creators IssueApple cancels AirPower wireless chargerApple drops HomePod price down to $299Apple AirPods 2 review: even more wirelessAmazon Is Making a Rival to Apple’s AirPods as Its First Alexa WearableAndroid Q's second beta embraces foldable phones, multitasking …Leaked Oppo Reno pictures show off the weirdest notch-killing slider yetAnker's GaN charger-battery combo is now in the Apple Store Verizon begins deploying its 5G mobile network in parts of Chicago and MinneapolisMicrosoft unveils new Surface Book 2 model with Intel's latest quad …Dell XPS 13 (2019) review: the right stuff, refinedApple apologizes for continued reliability problems with its MacBook … Vote for Vergecast in the Webby's! as well as The Verge's Why'd You Push That Button? and our wonderful YouTube channel Verge Science Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This weekend on Vergecast, we talk about airpower, the new AirPods, some Dell laptops, what's going on with Android Q and all the things. Google killed. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Prompt something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data in your cloud with enterprise security built in.

Go to Retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all. I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years, covering the biggest names and stories in sports. And mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th.

Tap in with us. That's a Vergecast. Hello, welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of the Verge and the Vox Media podcast system. Oh, for a 2499, you guys. We will send you a complete system. It's actually a multi-level marketing situation, but you can sell your friends that system for only 2499 as well. No. If it's the whole system, who gets to be the Sysadmin?

Ooh, it's pretty good. Anyway, I'm Nealai. I'm a friend. Deerbone is here. Hello. Paul Miller is here. Hello. So we're going to start by showing some stuff.

There's some news to talk about. Plenty of news. But first, I want to ask you, the Vodcast, listener, to do me a favor, which is go vote for us in the Webby Awards. The link is right there in the show notes and your app and on the web, wherever you're seeing this. We've been nominated for a Webby Award for technology podcasts. And I think we're the best one, and you should let the people know by clicking that link

can voting for us. You can also, why'd you push that button, nominated in the lifestyle category. You should vote for them because Ashley and Caitlin are amazing. That shows good. It's coming back, by the way. They're already in pre-production on the next season. And then lastly, this one is very dear to my heart. Verge Science has been nominated in the video category for science and education. Verge Science is amazing. The work they are doing on that channel is absolutely tremendous. They deserve, I'll just say, they deserve it more we do. I mean, we're great. You should vote for us. But if you only have one button to click on the web today

should be it for the science book. So go click on the Webby Awards, find them, vote for everybody. That would be very nice. If you only had one click per day in a web browser and you only got to use one web browser, what would you click? The Webby Awards. But see,

if you get click on the Webby Awards, you're done for the day. That's your one click. Oh, no. I'd get a Toby eye tracker and then I would cheat the system. Wait, wait, Paul. Does it in your system does a keyboard count as a click oh you're gonna do that that tab navigation well i'm just because you can go to like the verge.com and hit return you haven't clicked anything yet yeah you're right anyway i'm saying if no no keyboard's not a click if you only had one click to give i would

i would i would say use that click today uh to vote for a verge product in the webby awards potentially verge all right there's one more thing i want to plug which is this is the end you're listening this on a friday this is the end of our first inaugural creators week of coverage we are really thinking hard about the next big thing for the verge to cover to do. Obviously, now we got our start. A bunch of gadget bloggers here talking to you. That's where we began. We started The Verge because we realized the gadgets we were covering the most.

Phones, we're about to change the world. I'm going to go ahead and say that happened. Yeah. What you should say is we were right. We were super right about phones changing the world when we started the verge. That was our idea, was that the culture that technology is creating, particularly because of mobile, would impact the culture. we were correct. It did in fact happen. And now we're thinking about what's the next big thing

that technology and culture are going to create. And the more I thought about it, the more we thought about it, talked about it, the more we looked at our coverage. It is obviously the fact that so many people can become entrepreneurs doing creative work using technology and platforms. You can... What you're trying to say is TikTok. TikTok, right? But it's... TikTok is the future. When I was a kid, there was no ability to just be in my bedroom and be like, I'm going to tell jokes and something, something, something, and I'll be famous, right? And now that happens all the time because you just have a phone with a great camera in it. You've got access to the internet, hopefully.

You've got a platform that can distribute your work to lots of people. There's so many connective pieces of tissue between what the verges, what we cover, what we think about, and the fact that there's just like generation of accidental entrepreneurs. Would you say it's overstating it to say like when I was a teenager, I dreamed of being in a successful indie rock band? now teenagers dream of being a YouTuber. Yes, I think that's exactly right. And the ability for kids, whoever, to access those dreams is real, and it's totally been created by technology.

So what's the next thing I want us to think about and really understand is creators? And I think very broadly, if you look at our creators' week coverage, we are thinking about that super broadly, Kickstarter companies, little hardware startups that use Kickstarter and Patreon, Instagramers. Instagram has Ashley Carmen wrote a piece this week. Instagram has an entire talent development studio, Hollywood agents, like working in a building. There's like 100 people that just look around on Instagram

for the next people they think are going to be stars. And the dude is quoted in Ashley's piece. He's like, the main thing I do is like just click on my explore tab and like look around, tap around, see who's hot, bring them in. That's wild. That's a wild reality we live in. But that's how we create Starsdown. They're just like look around on these social apps.

YouTubers, obviously, Deeter is a YouTuber. I pretend to be a YouTuber sometime. Like that is a huge economy that is totally changing. Julia Alexander has a piece tomorrow that basically charts the rise and change of creators on YouTube over time and how that platform is changing, how they're pursuing much more advertiser-friendly content, much more family-friendly content, and the sort of original class of YouTubers feels short-changed. Like that's a big, meaty story about access to technology and what we do with it. SoundCloud, we cover music.

Where some of the biggest rappers in the world come from? They're all SoundCloud kids. I think that story is huge. It's everywhere. It's not like we are the only ones who see it. But I think the next thing that we can really focus on is what are the technologies that these people are using? Literally hardware. What is the, I think the biggest camera story in the world, when it happens, will be Sony adding a mic jack to the ARX 100.

Straight up. Like, it's great that Huawei P30 can, like, see in pitch black. Like, that's wonderful. But the day Sony puts a mic jack on the RX100, every YouTuber in the world is going to buy that camera. It's going to be a sensation. That's connected to what we do in a very deep way. Our platform coverage, right? Casey Newton's writing out platforms all day.

How do they moderate? What's allowed? How are they distributed? Net neutrality. How do you see these videos? If AT&T starts throttling YouTube because they want to show you Warner Media stuff, it's a big deal for this economy. So this is our first week.

We're like trying out all the different coverage areas. We're writing big stories about that world. I'm obviously very interested to see what clicks and what doesn't. I also think, just to be really honest, I don't think anybody's doing journalism for those communities very well. And there's a lot of trade pubs. There's a lot of business people. But when we write about music and music law, we actually get a lot of thank you notes from musicians.

Because they're like, thank you for explaining this to us because we are here to make music, not to be lawyers. So I'm very invested in this. Checkout Creators Week. Let me know what you think of it. Like, if we're doing the right thing, it's new. I think it's deeply connected to everything the Virgins ever wanted to be. But it's, to me, it's under appreciated how much of a change. has happened in our world because hardware, cheap hardware cameras, cheap software, plus platforms,

plus fast internet has, like, created literally what I think of as a generation of accidental entrepreneurs. Well, you remember, like, early mid-2000s when people were very, very excited about the internet? And they're like, anybody can become famous, and it's going to be many to many instead of one to many. And it was all very techno-utopian. And it was this promise that this was coming or happening.

And we're all like, yeah, yeah, sure, whatever. And, you know, some people made it as bloggers. Some people didn't. But very quietly, it just is like very commonplace now. And everybody's doing it. We just happened to have picked some, you know, terms for it, like influencers or creators that get co-opted a little bit by, like, brands. But it doesn't actually change the fact that that techno-utopian vision sort of came true

while we weren't looking. It's just not quite as utopian as, you know, everybody hoped. The Internet didn't completely feel. fix everything. It broke a lot of things. Are you kidding me? Navigating what that world is actually like now that we're living in it is really fun. I take that point all the time. Like you read the sci-fi and then every now and you see the screenshot of some like sci-fi book from the 40s and it's like this was predicted. But it's always a little bit shinier, a little bit more perfect. And like the reality is when you make have a bunch of people just making entertainment, you cannot predict taste.

Right. And so much of this culture is about people making a new kind of entertainment. and it's just all over the place. And it's a little, it's not even a little bit messier. It's a lot messier. Yeah, the way the culture develops is completely, it's not random, but again, it's unpredictable. Like, you look at TikTok and what lands or what doesn't is, you know, completely hit or miss.

Oh, my God, dear. I, like, when I was learning about the internet, like buying magazines to read about the exciting things of the internet, you know, like, that was the era in, like, the early 2000s. I remember reading in a magazine a quote about how there's some kid in a garage making the next great film because of the democratization of these tools and of distribution. And that's kind of what I thought would happen. And I ended up being like really, I guess I was wrong in the sense that what we ended up making, what new creators made with the more democratized tools was not the old forms. Like at the same time that there were new forms, new tools, there were new platforms, there were new mediums.

And I feel like that's taking me a long time to get used to the fact that you're probably not going to get a random kid in a garage make the next blockbuster film. But they're going to make something that the blockbuster film industry can't make and can't compete with. A really good example of this is when I-Movie first came out, literally the first I-Movie required a new I-Mac with Firewire port and a D.E. camera with a firewire port. The whole story of technology is just what ports you're using. But when Imovie came out, the first one, I think Apple had like a, it was like a Scorsese or in Oliver Stone. It was like, you know, one of these like major directors.

And they said essentially the same thing. These are the tools and new filmmakers. Blockbusters will be made this way. And that's just as interesting. You just look at blockbusters. It's the Avengers. Like, do you know what it takes to make a blockbuster now? Thousands of people like making CGI.

But on the other hand, you can make movies like, Tangerine, right? With an iPhone. But then you need to go to full editing suite. Yeah, whatever. I think Paul's point is the predictions where this will replace the thing, or these people, these tools

will help people grow into the mainstream, and we'll still have all these gatekeepers. And the reality is, there are no gatekeepers. You can just start publishing, which is amazing. That's how we started the verge. So to me, this is, like, deeply connected to the whole thing. There are gatekeepers, though, it turns out. There's YouTube algorithms,

and there's, you know, news apps, whatever. But there are still open platforms you can publish on, which is great. All this, by the way, is Neely working his way up to troll me to talking about the new Apple Clips update, and I'm not going to do it. Come on. You're the one user, man. I'm not in my pocket all day. When they put, you know, the update notes in the app store, it's like, Deeter really wanted to use third-party soundtrack, so we went ahead and added that. Deeter loves the BHS thing.

I mean, that's literally true. Anyway, we can stop plugging our own thing now. If you've been listening to the show, you know that we have been thinking about this sort of thing. It permeates everything that we've talked about. It permeates literally how I think about net neutrality, right? In order for this ecosystem to exist, you have to have access to the internet in a way that isn't blocked by some gatekeeper. And Deider's point about there being gatekeepers is connected to our coverage of YouTube and Facebook and Instagram. because those platforms control not only like the money of a lot of these creators.

They control their destiny. Like, where are they going to go? And YouTubers, Casey Nystatt was on the show a year ago now. And he was like, there's nowhere to go. Like, we're all kind of like poking at Twitch because YouTube is so frustrating. Like, that's a big story. And so we're going to keep at it. I will stop plugging our stuff now.

Go look at Creators Week. Please let me know what you think of it. Let us know where you think we should point that. coverage. We're going to have people keep doing it. I'm very invested in. I think there's something very real there. But we want your feedback. So let us know. That said, we're not giving up on gadgets. That's what we do. It's just like who we are. You know who is, though. Give it up on gadgets. There it is, man. All right, go. Apple canceled air power. If you listen to this show, you're the sort of person who

super knows this whole story here, but just the basics are we've been waiting for, I don't know, more than a year. Apple announced it before it was finished. And Apple SVP of hardware engineering Dan Riccio said, quote, after much effort, we've concluded air power will not achieve our high standards and we have canceled the project. We apologize to those customers who are looking forward to this launch. We believe, we continue to believe the future is wireless and are committed to push the wireless experience forward. The end. Only not. There's so much more. So let's just go through some timeline here. They announced the product on Sage. They actually showed the product in the sort of like demo area. Although I don't think it was operating at that point. It was literally

just like an oval. Like look at this oval. That was when they announced the iPhone 10 originally, right? And they said eventually we're going to do this wireless charging case for the AirPods. Obviously, they'll be able to charge your watch. What was really interesting at that time was that the phone used Chi, the standard. Apple betting on Chi was like a huge deal because there was a rival standard that just went away. They just, whatever we lost. I think it got technically, like, they finally, like, integrated and then, like, it went away.

It just, it went away. Truly, there's nothing more riveting than talking about two rival standards, deciding to integrate. But anyway, that happened. But at that time, an Apple was going to build on Chi. So they were going to take Chi and put it in the phone. That's everywhere. And they were going to, like, extend it in some way to make air power.

Yeah. Notably, the Apple Watch does not use Chi. At the time, they told journalists that the forthcoming AirPods case would not be cheap. It would only work with their power. So this is their extension. This is Apple doing W1 and Bluetooth. Embrace and except. First, they embraced, and then they, yeah, there is.

And then they extinguish. And then you pay $12 a month to use Apple News, which is trash. Anyhow. So this was their plan. We're going to build this custom mat. It's going to charge your phone. You probably need to charge your phone in more places than just at home. home, but your AirPods and you watch, you only really need a charge at home, so we won't let them

use this other standard, thereby guaranteeing that you will buy this mat. Moons pass. Things happen. Moons pass. Every briefing we go to, where's air power? And they say nothing. It is rumored heavily that there are problems in development. There were rumors that the Chi integration or embraced and extend thing was hard.

And the Chi people were mad, which is amazing. there are rumors that gets too hot. The iPhone 10S comes out, now it's a full year. They're like, where's air power? The rumors are like, this thing will never work. And then so then you get to two weeks ago when they do this flood of announcements. New Macs, the AirPods 2. Airpods 2 come out.

Everyone's like, oh, air power's coming the next day. And we actually assigned high in the story about how air power, like, missing out an air power was a big mistake, like a big fail for Apple. And we published it on Thursday. And like literally there was like a panic. Like, what if they announced air power on a Friday? Around this time, the Wall Street Journal published a story saying that Apple had approved production of it as a rumor, which was very strange. But my bet was that as soon as the AirPods 2 came out with Chi, that Air Power was done, because there's no world in which Apple does not take the lock-in when they can get it. If they put out AirPods 2 and they said, can wirelessly charge if you buy this additional $150 mat, everybody buys that mat.

Yep. And the second they said, you can just use another kind of charger. Now, the real mystery is the AirPods 2 case has a picture of air power on it and a sticker that says, can charge using air power mat or Chi charger. Yeah. And so, like, the open question is, like, how much of a last minute decision is this? I don't, maybe we'll just never know. Maybe they did approve production, and maybe they got the first batch off the line,

and they just, like, spontaneously combusted when you put your AirPods on. Who knows? There's two theories as to what went wrong. So the basic arc is Apple announced it before they had finished it, and they just knew they'd get it right. And then the two theories, I fix it, talked to somebody who's like, look, you put that many coils in that small space. It's going to create a wave of wireless interference and getting the FCC to think that's okay and getting it within the specs of how much wireless interference you're allowed to have with that kind of system is very hard. And then the other theory is that, as Neely has been saying, it just lit on fire. Joanna Stern published a review of alternate air power wireless charging maps, and she hates them all.

She's been wanting air power for ages. Every night again, I just got a random sort of plaintive text from Joanna that just says, where is air power? It's like 11 p.m. I'm like, I don't know, man. So she reviewed some other ones, and she did the same thing. She took the patents to some college professors and engineers. And everyone was like, this is harder than it looks. Inductive charging is very difficult. And solving it this way is technically challenging.

And I think one of the vibes she got was it might not be impossible forever, but it's going to take a lot longer than people think. But anyway, air power is gone now. And I think honestly, the only reason they killed it is so that we would stop asking about it in every single briefing. Because they had all disappeared it from the world. Like these pesky journalists keep showing up. And like, great, new IMAX.

What about that oval you announced a couple of years ago? But now it's gone. I think it is wild that Apple didn't announce another wireless charging accessory. Because it's not hard. They're not hard to make. Like, no companies make them all the time. What is the down great? If Apple just made wireless charging pads, right, that line up really well, you know,

like if you put them next to each other, they don't look awful. Yeah. And then you just put like two or three next to them. to each other and then you charge your Apple devices? I mean, how, other than the fact that you have to plug three, take a daisy chain with USBC. You still just have one outlet.

Like, that's not too far from air power, or am I missing something really special about the air power problems? They didn't require you to line up the device with the coil on the mat. And it also worked with the Apple Watch, which a cheat pad won't do. You have to have a special coil for the Apple Watch. Well, I think that's the embrace and extent.

Right. So Apple, so most otherwise, the charger just have a single coil, and then you, like, line up the phone and put it on there, and it starts charging. Air power had no alignment. There was just multiple overlapping coils. So then you would put it on there. It would figure out where your device is and light up the appropriate parts of the appropriate coils, which just saying it out loud seems insane. Yeah. But, so that was the big, I mean, but that's like, you know, that's like Apple getting it right.

Like, here's this common product everybody has. they hate about it. Lining up the coils. Okay, we'll just solve that problem and make it an Apple product. Like, that's what Apple does, right? Like, that's what, at their highest and best, like, Appleness, they, like, take the thing everyone's already using and sort of likes it makes it one tick better. And they just couldn't do it here. So I think the, here's the big outstanding question. When does the Apple Watch go to Chi? Ooh. Man. They can't do the proprietary one. And they're certainly not going to license up the proprietary one. Right. When do they just say, okay, you can charge your Apple Watch on any wireless charger.

There's wireless chargers everywhere. We're committed to a wireless future. By the way, your watch has to use this one cable we made. Yeah. I think it's a 50-50 bet the next generation Apple Watch charges on cheap. I think it's the generation after. But Apple has no problem making you fiddle with which cable are you going to use. It's true.

Someone should reply to that statement from Richie, which is a picture of all the dongles Apple ships, be like, really? You really committed to that wireless feature? There's one other air power question I really want to just hit, which is there's a lot of pushback, especially on Twitter, of people saying the only people that care about air power are people like us on Twitter and that regular people don't really care that Apple didn't ship this. We're making too big a deal out of it. And so, like, does Apple canceling air power even matter and in what way? Because it would be going too far to be like, Apple is doomed. They can't make anything anymore. But I do think that it's, I don't know, it's worth pointing out that they said they do a thing and they didn't do it. And I also think it's sort of worth pointing out that in a very Apple way, they spent a year and a half just like stonefaced refusing to say anything about it before they killed it, which I don't know what else I would expect Apple to do.

But it feels like it's resonant with people's feelings about Apple. And that's why everyone like was cackling about it so much. But exactly what that resonance is is I still haven't put my finger on it. Sure. Here's a list of things Apple can't make. TV deals. You can't make them, right? Wi-Fi routers. Wi-Fi routers.

Functional keyboards. It's fast. Wireless charging mats. A desktop computer. A desktop computer. Right? Like, they've been promising a modular Mac Pro for like a year now. I think that sort of latent feeling that Apple says it's going to do stuff and then it just kind of can't is like deeply tied to this silly wireless charging mat.

Right? And it's, I've been using Apple News Plus for two weeks. And this is the one product they announced that shipped and you can use. And that thing is a mess. Like, it is just a mess of an app. It doesn't have search. That's crazy. If you see a paywalled article out on Twitter, I just talked to us, Peter Kafka on the interview episode.

And you're like, I want to read that New Yorker article. I don't have a New Yorker subscription, but I pay for Apple News. There's almost nothing you can do. You can't just, like, take a web URL and plug it in Apple News and, like, have it show you the thing that you're paying for. This is like a very common thing that you might wish to do with your paid subscription is read the article you paid for when someone says there's a good article and you just can't do it. And I think that level of execution polish is that's the thing air PowerPoints too. You're a little bit more confident in or the Apple confidence they used to have that everything would always be better than the competition is faded a little bit. Also a desktop computer.

I mean, come on. It cannot be that hard. Like, just take the cheese grater case and ship it. Like, that's what people want, and they want to do it. But what they did ship was new AirPods, which we reviewed. Yeah, they interviewed. They interviewed them. Yep. They're good.

Yeah, I bought them. Yeah, what do you think? They sound exactly the same. They fit in your ear exactly the same. I bought the little foam things that supposedly helped with isolation, and that didn't work, so I took them out there. They're just weird, whatever. I have a hard time lining it up on my sheet charger a little bit.

It doesn't quite hit every time. The other thing that does when you set it on a wireless charge, charger is the charging light lights up, but then you've got an annoying, you know, lit up LED in your room and nobody wants that. And to Apple's credit recognizes that. So they just turn it off. So when you set it on a charger, the lights up and then it goes off after a minute, which is fine, except pair that with the fact that when I set it on my charger, it doesn't seem to land

every time exactly right because it's such a small charging area relative to the coil. you're always just a little bit unsure if it's actually charging. Yeah. Yeah, it's great for charging is wires. Just put it out there. Wait, I meant to ask, I don't have any wireless charging accoutrement. I have a phone that could be

charged wirelessly, but I don't. Do you guys charge things wirelessly? It's the best. The biggest upgrade I've made to my desk at work is the little anchor wireless charging stand. It's the fast wireless charger. So every time I sit at my desk, I put my phone on it, it starts charging. It's also held up.

So when I get notifications, I just see them. So that's like a, my phone's charged when I leave the office. That was not the case previously. But at home, when I'm like, I'm going to throw this on a charger, I'm always like, I'm going to plug it in because it'll go fast. But then I'm not like Dieter, who is maniacal about constantly charging. Yeah, I mean, I love it because I'm the person that anytime my battery life gets below 90%, I start to worry a little bit.

And anytime it gets below 60%, it might as well be dead. and I throw it in the ocean. That's how I feel about charging. I recently switched from a stand to a flat one so I could charge, you know, AirPods or the galaxy buds. And the flat one's fine. But yeah, I mean, I will plug in if I need it to be fast. But since I have a wireless charger by my bed on my nightstand and I have one on my desk,

I just always just set the thing down. And it's always pretty much topped off, you know, and then I'm only low when I go out into the world. Yeah. And, you know, you know me. I'm afraid of going out into the world. so I'm always charged up. That's great, Dieter. We're going to work on that.

So AirPods who are out, they pair a little bit faster. Have you noticed the call quality better, the microphone thing that they're talking about? I haven't, but I haven't had anybody complain. No one was complaining before. Yeah, I know. Bluetooth on my MacBook Pro is not great, but it has never been, so I don't blame the AirPods for that. Apparently, if you buy them and want to use them with an Android phone,

go find a friend with an iPhone and leave them paired to your friend's iPhone overnight, because apparently there's a firmware update that can, only be applied over iOS that sort of happens magically in the background, and that helps with its stability and reliability when appeared to Android devices and potentially other devices. That is the most. So, you know, that is just the most. You just wrote, like, you know, like those footnotes that are, like, kind of like legal disclaimers, there are at bottom websites.

They're, like, gray small font. That's the bottom of every, every web page on Apple.com. Is that what you just said? This thing doesn't work quite right. And if you have an iPhone, it might work a little bit better, but if you don't have an iPhone, you're screwed. Yeah. Okay. But then next to the AirPods coming out, Beats put out the new Power Beats Pro, which do not have wireless charging, have a much bigger case, but apparently sound much better, which is the thing that I think is the most important thing.

They charge it. And they're noise isolating. I'm pretty sure the Beats team hates the Apple team. That's just like a vibe I constantly get. So it's good that they were finally allowed to use the chip and ship the truly wireless earbuds. They're expensive. They're more expensive than AirPods, like $2.99. Yeah.

But those are the ones I think I might be more interested in than AirPods. The only thing I love about AirPods is the case, right? The entire case experience of that is really good, but I just don't think it sound good. And then I'm going to tell you why I'm saying this information at the same time. Apple also lowered the price of the home pod at $2.99. So all three things are Apple stories, and that's why they're... No, no. Here's my point.

What was Apple's big push with the home pod? It sounds really good. What is Apple's big push with the AirPods? Not it sounds really good. What is Apple's more successful product? The AirPods. Which are they heavily discounting? The one that sounds good.

I maintain that people will pick convenience over sound quality 10 out of 10. It just, you cannot, you cannot, it never works. And Apple should know this more than any other company because the first iPod sounded bad. They sold 120K. AACs and we're like, put a thousand in your pockets. Here's these white headphones. And it was like, this is the greatest innovation in the history of music. And it sounded bad.

And Apple's like, wait, the home pod is way more expensive. And it shoots beam-formed sound waves out of it. Nothing has ever sound like, but it can't set two timers at once. And that, like, in the AirPods, they sound okay. Like, whenever I tweet AirPods sound bad, people are like, but they sound great for podcasts. So if you're listening to this in your AirPods, thank you. I appreciate you. But just recognize that sounding good for podcasts and sounding good for phone calls and signing good for music are wildly different things.

And everyone will always cut music sound quality in favor of everything else. If you're out there making headphones or speakers, just know in your heart, people will pick convenience over sound quality. And I think that the home pods, AirPods dichotomy is as much proof of it as can possibly exist. Also, Siri is bad. Yeah. I will say that the AirPods are the only headphones, wired or wireless, that I will just like forget. that I have in my ears constantly. Really?

Everything else, I know I'm wearing them. But the AirPods's like, oh, shit, I'm wearing headphones right now. Yeah. That's pretty great. Is that why people just wear them all the time? I always wonder. Yeah. I'm going to do a full day of AirPods tomorrow.

It seems like the AirPods's primary advantage is that they are so tiny. Because that means that they can have a tiny case, which means that they can go in a tiny case inside of your pocket. Like the Power Beats Pro look great, but the case is going to be very bulky. inside of your pocket. Indeed. So it like all comes down to the size. And so yeah, you do trade off the fact that they don't stay in your ear and they sound terrible. But they're just super tiny. Because ultimately what we want is something that is just literally like we swallow like a pill one day and now we have great headphones for a year until like our body digests it. And then we have

to swallow a new pair of headphones. Yes, Paul. Can we just unpack what Paul said, which is that your body will slowly digest headphones for a year. And I believe you open that with what we all want. You don't want it to stay in there forever. You've got to have some way for your body to reject it so that you can get the new upgrade. Look, the future of the Apple store is body augmentation. I think we all know this. You know, sit down.

A genius is going to drill two holes in the back of your skull and then you get headphones. That would be amazing. That's why they're so sterile. All right, we have to move on. There's one rumor, though, AirPods competitors. Is this German at Bloomberg just did this? Right as we came to air. Yeah, apparently Amazon's working on fully wireless headphones that support Alexa.

And I don't know. I bet if you're Jabra, you're feeling really great about being featured in the Amazon store right now. I'm sure that there's no problems. You're not worried at all about what your placement is going to be when people search for wireless headphones in a couple of months. I'm sure that no one's thinking about that. So if you read the German story, and Bloomberg, it says the point is we failed with the fire phone, but we need to be out in the world. We need to put Alexa out in the world. We're not going to sell people a phone. We obviously can't get placement on Android or iOS. So we'll just put headphones in ears and Alexa will be there all the time. Presumably they'll do a data connection to your phone. You'll say, hey, Alexa, it'll light up and, right. They're not going to put like an LTE radio on these things. No. And you can do this right now. You can, like my Jabra 65 Ts. Like you can, when you open the app, Amazon Gets. gave them a pile of money.

And like the first time you open the app to configure your Jabras, if you want to adjust the EQ or whatever, the first thing you see is a splash screen saying, what if you switch to Alexa on these from the Google Assistant? And there's a bunch of other headphones that do this. So Bose, I think you can switch to Alexa. There's a bunch of Alexa headphones out there. But, you know, so it's a little bit weird because Amazon's not getting anything over and above what's available right now from third-party vendors.

Amazon's probably going to use the same tool kit that they gave to Jabra, because that's how Amazon does. They're pretty open. They use the tools that they offer to other people for Alexa stuff. So that's great. But again, I just go back to the retail placement thing. Like, if they can make something that has anywhere near the cultural relevance and importance of AirPods, I don't think they can. But if they can make something that's physically more convenient than the other options that are out there, they'll just be able to put it at the top of the Amazon store and sell a boatload of them. Yeah, so it sucks to be Java is basically the end of my story.

My Sony's, my Sony headphones have Google Assistant, and I never use it because it is totally acceptable to call out to your assistant when you are at home. And it is completely unacceptable to be on a plane and saying things like, hey, Google, you just don't do it. I will never do it. And I think that's like the biggest, even the Hey, Siri on the AirPods. Like, you can do it. great but I think that the social like the social acceptance factor I'm going to wear my AirPods all the time okay it's been a year there are meme everyone's doing it the social acceptance factor of like literally talking to Siri in public I think is a much harder road if you could

sub vocalize to Siri just like move your mouth and speak without actually breathing out to form audible words would you do that just like speak quietly but not actually speak to yourself just like imagine you could point a laser at like your adam's apple and your jaw so it can see what words you're forming. Yeah. Once again, I'm going to go back to the future

of the Apple stores. Obviously body augmentation. They're going to do piercings. They're going to do tats and they're going to drill AirPods into your throat or something. Okay. This wouldn't solve the airplane problem,

but it is sort of socially acceptable to like be in a, like a phone conversation. I guess that's not even great, is it? No, it's not at all. Because like if I get a phone call, I'm at a coffee shop,

I like step outside. Yeah. Because I was thinking, like if somebody made a personal assistant that like sort of, it responded to things that you would say in like a heated manner to your sibling on the phone, you know? Yeah, no, I'm with you. I mean, like, both Google and Amazon fully believe that like one future place they will deploy these assistants is the workplace. And like, there's a part of me that believes it, right?

Like, you know, Alexa, remind me to go to my meeting in 10 minutes. Like, that somewhat makes sense. And I just think about how amazingly rude that would be to everyone around me. I'm like, I shouldn't do that. That would be horrible. I love it, especially like an open office. You say like Alexa, like 20 Alexa devices light up simultaneously. It's pretty good.

All right, we got to take a break. There's a bunch of Google stuff going on. Here's going to walk us through it. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Every thriving, successful business has to start somewhere. A good place to start is a relatively simple question. What if, given the right?

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Shopify.com slash vergecast. Go to Shopify.com slash vergecast. That's Shopify.com slash vergecast. Support for the show comes from Grammarly. You don't need reminding that the world moves fast. But work today requires clear communication and when every message counts, sounding rushed or generic can mean getting lost in the shuffle. Gramerly gives you one place to think, write, and finish your work where you already write, while giving you access to agents that help you sound natural and engaging. No matter what kind of writing you're doing, Gramerly helps you get ideas done faster and move from draft to done with less friction. You can use Gramerly's AI chat to brainstorm ideas,

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Lots of Google. Android Q. Well, so there's like a Google made some stuff and it killed some stuff. Let's talk about what they made. So Android Q beta 2, right? It's the second beta, is the run up to releasing this thing whenever they decide to release it. And there's a few different things. They've got this new thing where you can make bubbles and they're like chat heads but for anything.

They've got a new thing where you can expand the volume slider. The thing I'll say about a bunch of the stuff that Google is doing in Android Q right now, I'll say two things. Number one, it's a lot of stuff that I'm just doing right now in Samsung. Samsung, one UI. Like, Samsung, you can take as many apps as you want and put them in little, like, popover windows and then reduce them down to chat heads. This isn't quite that.

This is like a more traditional, you know, bubble chathead interface. But same thing with the volume slider. Like, you could do it before, but they made it easier to get to the expanded version of all your sliders. Samsung's doing that right now. The second thing I'm going to say is every single version of Android, Google messes with a few different things. They mess with what the lock screen shows,

how it shows it, and when and its behavior. They mess with the quick settings panel. They just kind of shuffle some stuff around there, and they mess around a little bit with how notifications work. They kind of shuffle some stuff around there. And guaranteed every single version of Android, they change some of that stuff up.

So here, like the specifics, are they changing how the sliding behavior works and the lock screen looks a little bit different. They're moving the battery indicator, blah, but like relatively minor stuff. But now, since Android P and now with Android Q, you can add to that list of stuff that Google just fuses with every single version of Android. The fundamental way that you switch apps. Each of these two betas has had a different multitasking behavior.

And they made a big change in P on the pixel phones. And a lot of people didn't like it. I wanted the record saying it was a pretty big risk. And it kind of paid off from Medium well because it felt pretty janky relative to how the iPhone multitasks. But now, just every time there's new Q-Beta, there's like, you know, a new thing that happens when you move your finger down near the bottom of the screen. And then three days later, XTA developers goes in there and actually, there's even more options. And you can mess with these five other ways. And I'm fine with this list of stuff that Google fusses with on every single version of Android.

You know, tweak away, friends. Great. Love it. But maybe don't with the multitasking. Maybe the core navigation should feel relatively. stable over time. They have to do better than they did on P, so it makes sense that they're doing it now. But if they're doing this again with the next version of Android where they're just messing around with the way the multitasking works, no, thank you. Stop. Stop that. But don't they have

sort of like a license to do this or like an ability to do this because their vendors all just do whatever they want anyway? Yes. Their vendors all do what they want anyway. But actually all their vendors basically opted out of the PIL Android P multitasking that, that, that that the pixel has. Right? They're like, nah. We're no. No, thank you.

No. If Google made something good, they wouldn't opt out. Everyone just does the three buttons. And they've only had to experiment with gestures and hiding those buttons and making different gestures because Google hasn't provided a good swipe-based solution like Apple has. And I'm not going to say the other company that once had a really nice swiping navigation UI. It's not going to do it. You know, WebOS is on TVs now. TVs now.

Shut up. Is this Google's design process? Because I would like a principle, theoretically, I would like this a principal top-down design process that's like, we want to make it easy and intuitive to switch between multiple different apps in our exciting, multitasking mobile operating system. So that seems like a priority that you'd want to design for and maybe test. Is Google's method of testing just fussing around, or is this just like any developer at Google can just change some variables and push it live? You know the Handlin's Razor never attribute to malice what you could attribute to incompetence or whatever it is?

It's good razor, yeah. Yeah. With Google, it's like never attribute to like intentionality what could be attributing to a bunch of people running around in a room bouncing off the walls because they're bored. Or like actually at conflict with each other, right? Right. Well, I mean, okay, I'm not, I don't think the Android P multitasker is good, right? On the pixel. It's just not good.

So, of course, they have to do something new. Yeah, they do. That's like, that's the most generous interpretation of it. Now, do I think that it is insane that they haven't come up with a good idea yet? That is like the bigger problem because they have a very large competitor that figured it out in the first go. where Apple was like, we took out the home button and like 30 minutes later everyone was like, yeah, this is fine.

Google's like, we took out these software buttons that we can change it will, but we, I don't know what this idea is. An easier to, because until I had like played with Google's version of swiping between apps, I didn't understand why it was wrong, but an easier to understand, I don't know if this has changed in Q,

but in P, if I want to move an app between screens, right, I press and hold on it, and I move it to the edge of the screen. But there's just not a large enough area at the edge of the screen to signal that I'm trying to get to the next screen over. And so there's just this finicky fight

that I have to do to try to get my icon into that one narrow little gap that will bring me to the next screen over. Are you just talking about arranging icons on the home screen, Paul? Yeah, I'm trying to move an icon from one screen to the like, the next screen over on the home screen.

And on P, on my pixel 3, I find it very difficult to do. And it just seems like nobody tried, nobody tested that out with some sort of criterion for ease of use and intuitiveness. Yeah. I think they want you to use the assistant. So you tap on the icon,

you're like, third home screen, please. That's my problem. Again, the generous interpretation. I hesitate to be too generous here because they should be able to get it right. But I think what you're describing a Samsung is Samsung has to get it right. Yeah. They have to ship all those phones.

People have to use them. The Bixby Center of Customer Service Excellence has to take the phone calls, right? Like, they're a consumer product company. Android for Google is not actually a consumer product. Pixel aside. They don't even sell that many pixels. So, like, maybe they should sell more pixels. Maybe they would sell more pixels if they were more committed to getting it right.

But, like, the Pixel 3 has had way too many issues for me to be like, Google gives a shit. Yeah. To that, I also say that, like, judging them based on what they're doing in, like, early betas of the next version of Android is, you know, it's a little bit unfair. I think that part of this is, like, they've got a few ideas, and they do just kind of want to put it out there and see how the Android community reacts to them because they maybe took too big a flyer on the Pixel 3, and they didn't get it right.

And they just kind of want to see if anyone's like, oh, yes, do this. This is great. And if that doesn't happen, they'll just have to keep tweaking it until they release something. Yeah. Well, the next pixel will be the HTC team, right? In theory, yeah. My understanding was the Pixel 3 wasn't like we bought this team and they've made the phone soup to nuts top to bottom. It was still sort of the weird method that Google did before.

So the next pixel should be the one that was fully under Rick Austerlo's hardware team. And there's basically no excuses. They can't be like, oh, well, we're still working with some outside blocks. blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, it's their phone. It was before, and we should, you know, we shouldn't ever excuse a pixel. Technically, it's not fully a Google phone, but the next one, like, is completely theirs. I'm excited for it.

I'm excited for it because we're going to end up talking about the Huawei P30 Pro, I think, a lot more next week, because we'll have the review, all the stuff. But I'm very excited for that next generation camera because it seems like that's the, the camera race is now between the Chinese vendors and Google. Right. Yeah. And I think that's like, that's what I want. All I really want in the world is a camera. It's just like the first gadget that I ever loved was a camera. All right.

So Google made some stuff. They put out some stuff. They're trying stuff. They also killed a bunch of stuff. Yeah. I mean, the big ones this week were Google Plus and inbox. And, you know, there's people in my office right now here in San Francisco are like very unhappy about them killing inbox.

A lot of the inbox features have hit Gmail, but not all. But a lot have. And it's hard for me to work up a lot of feelings. about either of these because it's been a long time since I tried to use Google Plus. And actually, it's been a long time since I've used inbox. I kind of saw the writing on the wall and reacquilated myself to just using the core Gmail app, you know, six months ago at least. So I'm kind of like over it and like Google has to kill stuff.

That's what they do. The question is what stuff do they kill and can you trust the new stuff that they make when they kill stuff? And this is the stadia question, for example. So Google Plus is like more worrisome in that regard. because it was a company-wide effort, and then they killed the company-wide effort. But inbox is a bummer, but it's not like, I don't know, I don't have a lot of existential angst about it. Maybe that's just me.

Well, I mean, so we were just talking about headphones. Remember the pixel buds? Wop-womp. But it's just like, here's this thing. They announced with great fanfare. It does live translation. Like, I haven't heard a word about pixel buds. And they just because they're bad.

Right. But they didn't, like, work great. There haven't been, like, a flood of software updates. They're not marketing them. Like, are they going to make a second version? Are you committed to Google's vision of the headphones future? Like, I think that's the... Apple, like, fails to make a bunch of stuff, but they're going to make AirPods three.

Like, you know they're committed to this product line. They're going to do something with a MacBook at some point. They have to. Because they have to make computers. Whereas I think with Google, I think it's just this question. Like, what are they going to kill next? For example, here's a good one. They killed the artist pages on Google Music or whatever.

because they're pushing everything towards YouTube music. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. But, like, and they were going to, they confidently claim that YouTube is a music service, which sort of like by the numbers it is. Like, it's what people watch on YouTube. It's like tons and tons of music videos. But like, do you trust them to get YouTube music right?

Like, you subscribe to it. Do you, and you build a bunch of playlists and you subscribe to your favorite artists? And do you trust them to hold on to that forever? Because a subscription, like, subscription service. So, like, cultural products has to be there for a long time. Like, that's your music service. You're just committed to it. Like, I trust Spotify.

They don't have another business. That's what they got to do. Yeah. Apple music is what I put in some primary music service. But, like, that's like part of Apple's DNA. They've got to keep doing it. Google music. Every time they do a service like this, I'm like, I don't.

And I know everyone's going to tweet me out Google Play Music because everyone always tweets me about Google Play Music. But like, but I think Google Play Music is going away. Like, it's going to become YouTube music, probably, maybe. And I don't know, they just killed like two other messaging services. But don't worry. Don't you worry? They'll launch two more. Like that, I think Google's next stage of evolution is being more committed to the things they make instead of launching new things constantly.

I mean, would it be like a competitive liability for them to just have a web page where they put like ETAs of like like for the foreseeable future we have no plans to cancel this or like we are committed this for at least the next two years? I mean, because that's like, that's what's frustrating. Like, I was a huge inbox fan. And like you, Dieter, like, I quit inbox once I realized that they weren't supporting it anymore. Because I didn't want the pain. But even better would just never have to go through that whole cycle, right? If I knew, like, if it was flagged as an experiment, like Google used to do that, they'd call products like beta, right? So that you knew, like, this is an experiment.

Like, don't invest yourself in this because we might cancel it any time. Yeah, but they use that beta label so much. Everyone just stopped believing what it meant. That's awesome true. Right? Like, Gmail was in beta for how long? They were never going to be like, well, this didn't work. All right.

We're going to take one more break. We can come back. And then it's just a grab bag of gas in you. It's going to be wild. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you know that every hire counts. But time and resources are limited. finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates takes up valuable time you could be giving to your customers.

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Okay, Paul. You. Every week, my man. Uh-huh. You do a thing. It's got the same name, world-renowned for its consistency. What is that thing?

It is called a jaunty Neganotch Oh good I know what this is This is the leaked Oppo Reno which so

And I believe I'm using the term Neganotch correctly here Neganatch is not just a fixed notch that extends outside of the device but also a camera

for instance that rises outside of the device Right? Sure. Yeah. Okay. Well Opos doing a camera that is hidden inside of

the phone, but then comes out of the phone. But instead of your old and tired, straight up, um, tab aesthetic, it, it flicks. I don't know. It's like a, it's like a door handle. How do you, how do, how would you describe it? The best way I could describe it. It's like, it's like, yes, thank you. Imagine, imagine, imagine your phone is a box of tic tacks and then the lid on the phone on the top of the tic tacks comes up a little bit. And there's a camera hidden in. Yeah. At a jaunty angel. I love it.

That's all I'm trying to say. If this is the next wave of hardware innovation, I stand by it. I endorse it. I believe that this is the policy that America needs right now. Vote Patel. Also, what about UBI, though? You're trying to get Yangang on me, bro? Always.

Okay, so there's a video of this in action, and it was pretty impressive about it, Because like some of these early negative-notched cameras were real slow. Like this snaps open. As fast as the camera takes, the software of the camera takes the switch. And then it made me think, you know what's really slow is switching cameras. I feel like that should be like a really important metric. Is it motorized or is on a spring? No, I mean in software.

Yeah. Oh, I don't know. I don't know how the actual... I hope it's on a spring. I think putting motors on these pop-up cameras is the stupidest idea. Like, why? Just a spring is fine. Yeah, it pops off,

actuated so it'll pop out, whatever. But yeah, it looks motorized to me. Well, you could motorize the clothes, but you want the open to be a spring. The open looks like a spring. It's just pooh. But I'm just saying that software cameras are very slow at switching.

And I feel like that was something that we would talk a lot about back in the day, and I don't see as much focus. But I'm just, I'm really getting to the point where like I'm really into like day to day like how long does it take my MacBook to open the system preferences something I've done like three times a day for my entire life is open the preferences on my Mac like why is there like a serious pause there and so anyways that's my new crusade. I think your camera thing is very much an Android thing because I'm opening the camera

on my 10S right now and is instant. It's actually a pixel three thing. The pixel three camera has gotten slower to open progressively over the past year or so. The camera on my Galaxy S-10 is bam. I really bet the right horse for my switch to Android. Yeah. No, there's a Pixel 3 story about how this phone... The Pixel 2 is, like, beloved. It had the one thing where, like, if you saw the screen, not be great.

He puked. Huh? Right. If you looked at it, you instantly vomit it everywhere. No, but, like, people loved it regardless of this... if it's not great screen. Yeah. But they loved it.

It was a great phone. But the Pixel 3, I think, is just frustrating people left and right. There's a story in there. I don't know what it is. I mean, that's the whole story. I just said it. It's a good story, though. There it is.

I found it. All right, Dieter, gadget corner. Let's race through these. Okay, so I bought and I'm excited for the Anchor GAN charger battery combo. Very excited to have a charger battery combo. USBC. We'll see what works. It's only, I think, 5,000 milliamps.

terms of the battery, but that's fine. That's all I really need. I have an anchor charger battery combo. It has two USBAs, but it is one of the best things I own. It is one of the best travel things I own by far. Yeah, it's 30 watts, which is not as much as I probably want for a MacBook Pro, but enough to get by. And I think it's going to be, it's going to be the thing. I'm going to, instead of carrying an adapter for USBC charging and a battery, I'm just going to carry this thing. There you go. I saved like a quarter of a pound in my bag and I'm happy as a clam. Yeah.

No, I think that this is like, it's another Apple story. Like, Apple is selling this thing in their store because they haven't yet made a great GAN power brick, which people are only just starting to do. But Apple's power bricks used to be the best power bricks, and now they are not. Yeah. I recently reviewed the Dell XPS 13 to jump ahead. And their power brick is just a thousand times better than Apple's power brick. Yeah.

In terms of cable management. You really like that XPS 13. Yeah, it's great. And Gadgett reviewed it today The Day We're recording, and they call it the perfect Ultra Portable. I don't know that I go quite that far It's still got a couple of compromises But relative to the compromises that people are making on

MacBook Pros You mean not being able to type letters? Well, the primary XPS13 competition right now Seems to be the Huawei MAPbook, right? Matebook X and Makebook X pro X pro or ProX or however they go. And the decision there is like, you want the pop-up nose camera not. But they're great as well.

Windows laptops are great right now. Yeah. 16 by 9 screen on that XPS though. Yeah, it's fine. If there's something about it. It's just not... I mean, I would, if Microsoft would just stop being obstinate and stupid, I would tell everybody to buy the Surface laptop if they would just put USBC on it.

Yeah. The end. One of these days. One of these days. It's going to happen. It's going to be great. Everyone's going to love it. You know, I can talk about other gadgets.

I don't want to talk about the palm phone, which is just a Verizon. I'm not going to do it. Since we're already talking about laptops, we should talk about the fact that Apple finally apologize for MacBook keyboards. Yeah. I mean, it was in Johannes column last week. They put out a statement. Granite's column is wonderful.

You should go look at it, read it. Those keyboards are a mess, and I think it's a building mess. It's just all part of the same latent as Apple getting it right lately vibe. Yeah. Then hopefully, hopefully they do something. They've got to change the design of those keyboards. I don't think they can come back and say they fixed it for real this time and regain any trust. If they come back and say they fixed it for real this time and we have to go into a review,

all we're going to do is dump sand on this keyboard until it breaks. Because, like, what else can you do? All we're going to do is say we can't properly review this product until we've had it for six months as a daily driver. We see if the keyboard breaks. Because there's no way anyone can recommend that product right now. Well, and Apple has never admitted to fixing anything also. Like, they've only said we've made it quieter. They've never said we've fixed the...

actual reliability problems. Yeah. Most people love them, is what they said. Yeah. We're sorry, some weirdos have problems. Weirdos like you, Joanna Stern, lead technology columnist to the Wall Street Journal. Right. And so, and Joanna, to her credit, like, just stuck with the key sticking.

But the second problem with this keyboard is that it's all so bad. Like, I, as a person who's used MacBooks for a long time, Like, you know, I don't know, it's probably unfair of me to criticize because I'm probably going to end up getting like a PC laptop anyways because I pretty much just want to run Linux and it's all going to be fine. But I've just completely ruled out MacBooks with their current keyboards. I could not stand typing on a keyboard with that little give for any long amount of time. I'm telling you, man, I got a 2015 MacBook Pro. It's got a bunch of USBA ports. It's got an HTML port.

It's got keys to travel. It's got a GPU that's not good It's got a fan that's on all the time Yeah Bad boys ready to go As the person who's reviewed more MacBooks Than anybody in this little trio I do feel weird because

I don't hate the keyboards In terms of the physicality of typing on them I actually like I enjoy the small key travel In a weird way because I'm a weirdo And I feel like I'm faster And I don't mind the clackiness They are pretty loud but you can't measure the reliability very easily that early in the process of using a thing or even owning a thing.

So it's always put me to a tough position where I'm like, okay, well, here's this keyboard, a bunch of people don't like it, it's fine, it's working, we'll have to wait and see about reliability. And the next time I even did it with the MacBook Air, right? And wait and see about reliability is just a really tough place to be in. And Joanna's column really perfectly captured the general sense that the opinion on these keyboards went from like, maybe, we'll see. I don't like it, but some people I think it's okay. There's some maybe reliability problems, but it's probably fine. To just universal hatred. There are very few people who are willing to go out there and say, yeah, no, actually, this keyboard is good.

The only people that are out there saying, yeah, this keyboard is good is Apple. Yeah, well, because Apple pays those people. Who knows what they believe in their hearts? All right, one last thing. We got to mention it because, you know, it's a big deal in the tech news world. Verizon lit up. It's 5G network. It's actual 5G network in Chicago.

We sent Chris Welch. It's very fast. Yep. He has a very good story up about it. You should go look at it. That dude's killing it lately. But you have to, like, stand on one foot on one street corner in Chicago and, like, say an incantation, and then you'll get 500 down on Verizon's 5G network.

Also, you have to be using a mode of. Z3 with a gigantic modemot. Also, when you get on 5G ultra wideband, it shows a 5G UWB logo in your status bar. That is like

a hundred point font. It's just gigantic. It's amazing. All these things are excused, right? It's their first light up of a network. It's actually there. Presumably, you know, the Samsung Galaxy has 10, 5G is coming out. That's a real phone. It's not a brick of

radios that you glue to an old phone. You know, they presumably expand service. But it's here. It's actually happening. T-Mobile dunked on Verizon super hard. I don't know if you caught this. The CTO of T-Mobile tweeted, congratulations, on launching your millimeter wave network.

Just hope that you don't have any doors or windows around because it will block the signal. Because T-Mobile is going with a different spectrum. So that's great. Also this week, I just want to point this out. No, last week, AT&T switched over to the 5GE logo on the iPhone. Apple put out iOS 12 point whatever the logo changed I now have 5GE lots of people have 5GE 5G of course is fake it's a fake idea it's just a logo change that Apple allowed to happen on their phone I tweeted the 5GE speeds I receive here in New York which has a very congested

LTE network 19 down on 18T's 5GE network other people started tweeting at me as well Ben Bajrarn is a great analyst less than a megabit down with a 5GE network logo on his phone. Because 5G is just a rebranding of AT&T's LTEE network, which is already hopelessly congested. So all these people are tweeting, everyone's tagging AT&T, which is amazing. AT&T puts out a, this is my favorite part. I think a gadget wrote this up. We didn't.

But AT&T put our press release with a chart fastest wireless network, right? Huge spike, average speed of 40 down. And Ronnie Mola at Recode looked into it. An Ukla, which is the speedtest.net vendor, told her that, it's literally because when they changed the logo over, so many people tested their speeds. No. Right?

So they literally just got people on their slightly faster network to submit more results, thus bumping up their average. Because literally the spike is they switched the logo and people said, oh, I wonder how much faster the network is and they hit the button. Right. So if everybody on every network was just testing to see how much better LTE has gotten over the past couple of years. Yeah, if Verizon could figure out that you're in a relatively uncongested part of their network and send you a push notification that said, please say speed test, they would see a similar spike. Anyway, 5G is a horrible lie.

Real 5G is in Chicago, and T-Mobile thinks it sucks. That's like where we are in 5G race right now. I mean, there's so much to know about five. I mean, here's where I'm at right now. I have no, I pin zero hopes for my future happiness on 5G. Because it's not just, yeah, if you're going to use something like millimeter wave, right, you're going to need a billion base stations to cover everybody. So that's not going to happen, obviously.

And then if you do end up with a faster wireless pipe, you still need infrastructure, like a backhaul, some, some thick, of physical fiber optic pipes to serve that network. You know, is that upgrade happening? If that upgrade was happening right now, it would be improving our LTE speeds that are typically around 50 down in most places I go in America,

but they could theoretically be 250 down if there was fast enough backhaul. You know, like all these things, like just make me wonder, we're like a decade away from 5G. We're not like on the cusp. Yeah, but that's true of LTE as well. The free market's going to take care of that fiber problem.

Yeah, that's what's. going to happen. If only I had interviewed Susan Crawford on this show about the looming fiber crisis in America. No, I don't remember if I've done that. It's in there somewhere. Someone should tweet at me if I've done that. That'd be great. No, I think the point Paul's is making is absolutely right. But I look at it for LT deployment took a decade, right? And the first LTE phones were battery monsters as well. Like, it's fine. I think everyone's just like a little bit over their skis. Like,

they're promising things will happen with 5G that just won't happen for many, many years. But in the meantime, there's a logo on my phone that indicates that I get 19 down, which literally drives me insane

every time I see it. I hate it. I hate it so much. And I think what is really interesting is no one's buying it, right? Yeah. Like, no one believes they actually have a 5G phone now.

The early adopters who have iPhone 10s is and whatever, They all know they're being lied to by AT&T, and I really hope this industry takes a lesson from that. They can't just lie to people anymore. Are you going to switch carriers over it? Yeah. In order to switch carriers, people ask me to send me.

In order to switch carriers, I literally have to change my parents' security system because my dad bought the stupid Uver security system for their house. So, no, that is not what's going to happen. It's the ultimate in lock-in. Like, will my parents door locks work if I switch carriers? I don't know the answer to that question, everybody. Beautiful handcuffs.

It's like Eli Patel story. My message has got nothing on AT&T. And they called him and they just said, do you want a new security system? It'll be free at GIPGERS. And the man said yes. And now I have 5GE. And that's just where I live. I don't know.

I'm like an old man. I should not pay for my parents sell anymore, but here I am. It's just some chaos theory right there. It's a butterfly in Brazil. It's so much. It's so, so much. All right, that's it. That's the Vergecast.

Thank you for listening. Please check out our creators' re coverage and push it one more time. It's so important to us. I think that community is underserved. I think it is a type of culture that is much more dominant than anyone gives it credit for. Check it out. Let us know what you think. Let us know how you want to push it.

it. Please vote for us in the Webby Awards. We would love that. I would love to win that award this year. And then you can tweet at us. I'm at Reckless. Paul's Future Paul. Deeter's a backlon. You can look for us on the platforms you're at. You can find us on Instagram. You can find us on YouTube. You can be everywhere. You also listen to some other podcasts. It's Recode Media with Peter Kafka. Crossover with the Vergecast this week. We just ran the same interview on both places. So check that out. It's pretty good. You can listen to Recode, decode with Kara and Scott Galloway. Our shows are coming back. We have a secret Verge podcast.

It's coming a few months from now. I'm very excited about it. I'm just hyping it one time. Yeah. No more information we're given to you. Fine. Okay. I know.

Thanks, Teter. That's it. Rock and roll. Bye. Paul. promo code.