The Vergecast - An Incorrect Oral History of Vaping

Episode Date: October 24, 2014

Following an immediate but brief foray into Nilay Patel’s dark memoir-in-progress, the Vergecast progresses nicely into a week chock full of news, led by Nilay, Dieter Bohn, and David Pierce. We have Google’s new Nexus lineup, Apple’s new iPads and iMac, a brave new email paradigm, and Twitter’s content problems. Then, for some reason, there was some mild debate about the nature of vaping, but you’ll have to listen to fully grasp that thread. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Zero, negative one, negative two. You're not good at this, Eli. I am terrible at starting this show. So if you don't know, John, a producer counts us in. And then the joke was that I kept counting. Because numbers are infinite in both directions. You're going to make a great dad. No, that's not true.

Dead baby, the Nehai Patel story. Goodbye, everybody. It's a book I'm working on. Welcome to the Vergecats where we go dark. right away. Hello, and welcome to the Vergecast. I'm Eli Patel. I'm Deidre Bone.

I'm David Pierce. Can our new tagline just be, it only gets better from here. There are no other directions. Rock bottom, the Vergecast. It's not bad. So this is the Vergecast where we talk about technology news and other news

and good times and bad times. Most of us drink while we talk. Yeah. That's just happening. But other than that, it's actually been two weeks. since we're on the air. Last week at this time, David and Dieter and I were all at the Apple event. And we had the Verge Live, which hopefully you listen to. But we're back now. We have the iPads from said Apple event. The Retina IMac is here. Our review of that is going up soon. We actually gave the Retina IMac to our video team to review because they will use it more than we will. It runs Chrome, everybody.

Google Docs. It's so fast. Whoa. It's the best. By the way, Chrome runs slow on the new IMac because Chrome is slow. Because Chrome is awful. Safari, though. That's so fast. Wicked fast. It's the fast.

Except in Google Docs where it's pretty bad. Anyway, so we have, you can't see it if you're presumably listening to this like most people. We have all the devices here. Our views have gone up. We have a Kindle voyage. And Dieter actually stayed in California. I did. Through the other part this week and went to Google.

I did. To play with the Nexus 6, the Nexus 9, Android Lawley. pop and then inbox which is sort of the new gmail right so just a lot of stuff going on there a ton of stuff um and then other stuff happened and then they like Microsoft just announced earnings yeah they're selling surfaces yeah well they mostly I think they mostly sell them themselves that's about well they doubled the revenue on surfaces 20 dollars I don't know the numbers nine hundred eight million dollars on surfaces Microsoft is really good at having billion dollar businesses yeah it's their main thing that they do um no we should talk about that I mean that's not the

worst thing to be good at it. No, it's just like that's, that's their mark. And then they're like, no, that's, we're done. Billion dollar business. Just try something else. Let's start, let's try something else. Actually, you know, talking about the service is an interesting thing to do in the context of these iPad reviews, which is where we should start.

Okay. Sure. Yeah. So I've had scheme out last week. Yep. So speak, I mean, speaking of where we were a week ago, it's like where we were probably a week ago at this exact minute is sitting in a room. being like that was the weirdest apple event

we've ever been to. Yeah. Yeah, it's 430. It had just started, no. It was 1.30. So we were like, it was over. Were we drinking? We might have been drinking. Yeah, we were done. It was weird. The Chili's. Well, it was weird because they, we talked about this on the Virg Live, Vergecast, whatever it was.

Like, they went for 45 minutes of recap. Typically, you expect recap at this October event. That's what they always do it. But this time, it just kept going. No, you expect recap at the September event. No, you expect it at the October event because they recap iPhone sales.

Oh, no, that part. I thought, usually what they do. So this has been a weird year for Apple because they've broken their usual pattern. So usually WWDC is previews of OS 10 and iOS. Which it was again. That's fine. That's fine. They showed off a bunch of neat stuff.

And then the iPhone event is iOS 8 recap plus one new feature for the iPhone. Yep. Right. And this year it was no recap whatsoever. Here's the iPhone. It's bigger. Here's our weird watch. Yeah.

Let's talk about it for hours. Forever, right? And they blasts to throw that stuff. They'll just throw that stuff really fast. And then this time it was tons and tons of recap of iOS and OS 10, Yosemite. Yeah. Like massive amounts of recap. Then here are some iPads.

They do all of the same things. Well, no, no, no. That's not true. Here's an iPad. Oh, there's another one too, but we're not going to talk about it. Deter's mad about that. And then. And then here's a retina iMac.

I spent a lot of time on the rent. And so it was just that amount of opening recap of things we already knew. Also, it was the quiet period right before their earnings. Yeah. Right. So they were like, we've sold more iPhones than ever before. There was a lot. Just so many iPhones.

I mean, just more than you couldn't. I mean, think of the biggest number, a number that won't materially affect our stock price. And that's the number we, and they wouldn't. They just couldn't say it. It's not their fault. They just couldn't say it. Yeah. It came off kind of weird.

It came off very, but then, when we were talking to them afterwards, it was like, cool Amazon move. Yeah. Right? Because that's like the Amazon move.

We sold so many Kindles. Cower before us, book publishers. It's like, yeah, but how many? Like, don't you mind?

So many. Just read our books. Heshet. You're soon to be dead. That's how Jeff Paiso's talking. That's not right. Flowing hand movements. It was like,

cool Amazon move and all the appapagos just like, yeah, it's earning, we can't say it, but it was a lot. And by the way, Amazon, you know, they don't sell very many of anything. That's why they don't have their numbers. It was like that little sideburn. But now, so the iPads came out. It was a weird event.

It was a very low key. They didn't have a lot to say about their stuff. Tell me this. If the September event had just been iPhones. Yeah. Would you have been, and they had leaked or somehow like made everybody

come to understand. ahead of time that the iwatch was going to wait until october and all we had to talk about on september were huge iPhones and you know all this and iosate and ios eight and ios eight that would have been fine yeah right why i mean it would have been normal like last year they did the five s which was right they were like hey they can't wait on the iphams they needed to sell the iphone they should have waited on the watch they've built an iphone event around a lot less than the iphone six yeah right and just talked about that and done fine with it and nobody had any issue with it. And then, so to rush out with this, I think what they're doing is, like,

trying to get out as far ahead of the watch as they can. And they're like, if we get this into developers' hands a month earlier, like, that's a victory. Yeah. Like, that's the only thing I can think of is they're in a race to make sure people know about this. A, so that people don't buy other watches because they're going to get good really fast. But B, because they just need to give it to developers so they can figure out what the hell this thing is. I mean, hang on. Do you really think that Apple is at all worried about Android? where? Yes.

Really? Yes. I think they're worried that somebody else will capture the market before they do. I think that a month is really worried

that this watch isn't going to be very good. I think I'm very worried about that. So am I, but like I've never, like the way that Apple is doing this, like the fact that Apple is putting

Johnny Ive out in front of everybody to talk about the watch is a thing. Johnny I being on stage somewhere says something about Apple. And like Apple really, is working really, really, really, really hard to make sure

that you know how great this watch is. And it's like, it reeks of this kind of like insecurity. If you had told me in 2010, and this goes into the iPad review, and we should talk about that. But if you had told me in 2010 when the I-Had came out

that four years later, people would be most excited about the iPhone and the IMAQ, I would not have believed you. Yeah. Neither would Apple, I don't think. Right. And that turn has been made

where Apple's most exciting products are definitely its phones and definitely it's Macs. If they had put out a retina 12-inch MacBook Air, it would have blown the iPad, the interesting iPad out of the water. Yeah. We would be talking about the 12-inch air is like the ultimate laptop, blah, but we'd be doing all of that thing that we would do.

We will be doing that next year. But with the iPad, it's, and this is where you're going to use, with the iPad, they just have not focused on it. It feels like the iPad completely lacks, like, a champion at Apple. Nobody cares about this product and what it should be and where it should go in a big way. They care about the fact that it exists, and they sell a bunch of them. And some developers do something,

and companies like IBM want to take it and use it as their new enterprise solution. But they are not interested in replacing laptops with it anymore. They're not interested in having this be a primary computing device for most people anymore. They're interested in that in principle. They say that they're interested in it, but it hasn't happened because the software hasn't advanced enough to support it.

The other thing that's related is, like, Apple had their earnings before the right around the time these reviews came out. And, like, Tim Cook basically said, look, we thought the iPad was going to look like the iPhone in terms of sales trajectory. It turns out it looks more like the Mac. And so for that kind of product that has that kind of like growth curve, it's a different innovation cycle for them apparently. Which is a bummer because I feel like they could juice it.

They could, if they made it more productive. Yeah. I mean, what Apple needs to do is essentially just manage expectations with shareholders, right? Like that's what that was. Is them saying like, hey, don't forget, we sold a lot of these. Like, they still do. Like the fact that it's growing, that it's even decreasing in sales, they still sell a lot of them. It's a huge business.

And then, but so what Tim Cook is trying to say now is like, don't expect this number to go up that much. Also, don't forget it's really big. And so then that's what they're trying to get at now. It's like, people cheer the Mac when it goes up and when it goes down. They're like, oh, well, these things are cyclical. Something will come out and it'll go back up again. And like, that's how it works. And that's fine.

And that's what's expected. But we've been waiting on the iPad to just keep going up. And like, everybody waits on this like, holy crap, the big number. and it's just not, that's not going to happen. I don't know. I think it hasn't happened because Apple has put zero effort into anything but the hardware of the iPad. And if you look at the iPad, the original iPad and the new Air 2, it's like magic.

Legitimately that is magic, right? Like, human beings are smart enough to have accomplished that goal, right? Sure. That's crazy. That's huge mistake. It's so ugly. That's great. This is a hard product to believe, right?

This is science fiction 20 years ago. Yeah, people, I've seen people say, oh, it's thinner, who cares? It, like, that legitimately matters to me. It feels more magical. It feels like it's just a screen. Yeah. It's cool. It's a cool thing.

But then you turn it on, and they've let it become a giant iPhone. Yep. And as much as they don't want to say it's a giant iPhone, it's a giant iPhone. That's how it works. And we already have giant iPhones. Right. And so this is a lot of familiar. And world with giant iPhones, like having a giant iPhone is not very useful.

Right. And they just haven't done the things that you need to do to a tablet. And so, like, I, we got them. I flew back to, yeah, it's a dream. You should put the sushi on it. Dieter's holding up on its fingertips, like a waiter. Yeah, like a classy waiter, like a classy, dramatic waiter. Sorry, Teter.

I all serve schnitzel on it. No, but if you think about the way, like, people use iPads, it's as a computer that many people can, like, have. Right. You can put it on table and play with this, you pick it up. And Apple has just not paid attention to how people are really using these things. They're letting app developers do it. But because iOS is restricted and the apps has all these rules,

app developers can't go past what Apple's operating system will allow them to do. Can I finish your point and then I'm going to give us a brief aside on the Nexus? Because they can't go that deep, so this thing is as powerful as a 2011 Macquarcare. It has three cores, right? Like, it scores really high in key, like, 2011 MacBook Air. But if you asked me which computer I would rather have a new iPad Air 2 or a 2011 MacBook error, I would definitely pick the MacBook Air. Because it is more flexible, like, all of that power is more, I can use it.

Like, browsing the web is better on a 2011 MacBook Air than an iPad Air too. Yeah. Which is kind of a damning thing to say about a tablet. A tablet. Yeah. Right? But, like, the thing to me is that I just feel like the, the, bet was almost wrong.

Like I think what everybody thought was going to happen on your tablet is it just happening on your phone. Yeah. And that's like the fundamental, the reason it's growing so fast is because all of the tablet growth that we thought was going to happen and all of the phone growth that we thought was going to happen is all just phones. Mm-hmm. Like all of that.

People aren't buying tablets and not phones. Like they're just buying phones. Bigger and bigger phones. Right. And that's also why they keep getting bigger. That's why the Nexus 6 is bigger. Like the, I think we're going to see it get bigger before the trend stops. Right.

And like, that's what's happening. happening. And that to me is like, that's also why A, I think the 9.7 inch iPad is the only one they care about. It's why the Nexus 9 is 9 inches instead of 7. Or 7 inches or whatever. Like the bet it's like it's over clearly. Big tablets are the only tablets as far as anybody is so like little tablets were cool for what they got two years basically. Yeah. They had a they had a minute and then phones got big enough that they did 80% of what your tablet would do and a hundred percent of all these other things. And it just stopped. mattering. Yeah. And this is why, like,

the, you know, the iPad Mini is the new iPod Touch. Right. Right. Like, why would you buy an iPod Touch at this

moment when you can buy a $2409? Yeah. Because the iPod Touch has... Because it's faster than a 240-0. Yeah, that mini is a piece of it. The other thing about your review that was super important.

You brought it up is the sharing thing. Yeah. That is how I want to use a big tablet. I want to look at this thing and hand it to somebody. And the fact that Google is so far ahead of Apple on, like, multi-user on tablets.

And they've got this new feature in Lollipop, which I'll be putting up a thing tomorrow, you can pin an app. So you go to the multitasking view and like you hit a big pin button and then it's just locked into that app. Really? You don't have to like create a user for your, yeah, it's amazing. You don't have to create a user for your kid. You can make a guest user.

Or you can in your own space, you're like, find the game, open it up, hit the big green pin button and it's locked into that app. How do you get out? You like swipe up and enter your lock code and you're done. Wow. Yeah. That's brilliant. It's super genius.

hey, you can use, like, literally you can be like, hey, you can use my phone and hand them the phone. Yeah. That's a big thing. Yeah. That's really smart, actually. I really want, you know, to be able to use multiple apps on an iPad. I really want to be able to, like, have a shared iPad in the family and, like, have them, like, give it to your kid. If you want to hand your iPad, like you said, if you want to hand your iPad to somebody, it's a choice between.

Talking them your lock code or turning off the pass code. Right. Which is insane. Every single person in his office knows the, you know. lock code on my phone and my tablet now. Because everybody who wants to use it, I'm like, I have to tell them the lock code. Every single one.

I know what it is too. Just tell the people. That's okay. Just tell them. It's a secret. But I mean, I don't want to get too far down the Nexus line, but like you compare the Nexus 9 hardware to this. Like, give me this.

You compare the app ecosystem. Give me this. There's so much that's right here. I just wish they would finish it. Put Android on your iPad. No. you've got to be able to do it. Someone somewhere has heard of that app.

Yeah, I don't know if they figured it out for the most recent locked up. But then you get into the problem with the Android tablet, which is, those are all good ideas. This is interesting. Android apps. But you're a bunch of gigantic phone apps. Although I do, I mean, I do think we're getting to this point now where, like, this has been the tension forever, right? Like, can Google figure out hardware before Apple figures out services? And, like, Google seems like it's running a little bit faster right now.

Like if the Nexus 6 is as good as you make it sound, then like that's a big deal for Google. Like if they've made a, the camera was the only thing that sucked for a long time. It's basically in the classes of the 6 plus, which is also great. Not the camera, the overall hardware. The camera is like a really good Motorola camera.

It's better. It's like MotoX class. I mean, I only used it for a few minutes. Yeah, fair. It's not a Nexus camera. It's like a Motorola. Which is to say it's not a total piece of garbage. I mean, that's like,

I keep saying it, but it's airplay, eye message, and the camera. And that's why I have... I will say I am more locked into I message than ever now that I can send text messages from my computer. Yep. Like, that to me is reason enough to keep my iPhone. Right. And there you go. Yeah.

I mean, I carry two phones. I almost certainly buy a Nexus 6 and then have two gigantic phones. That's going to happen. That's why I got the smaller iPhone so I could carry the gigantic Android phone. Yeah. I mean, so before we, we should talk about Google a lot, but we should finish talking about it. Yes, we should. So the iPad Mini 3, Dieter, you reviewed this.

So, but actually, let me address the score. I didn't review this so much as I, like, had feelings about it. I mean, that's how I reviewed the iPad, too. So we gave this, the iPad Air 2, a really high score. We gave to 9.3. We gave them both high scores. What did we give this? 8.5?

8.5, yeah. And so the reason we gave it a high score is super simple. It's the best one you can buy. And the hardware is remarkable. and across the tiers of pricing, you get more for less money. So the high-end one is cheaper. The $128 with LTE is $100 cheaper than last year,

and it's faster and has better processor. You can't argue with that stuff. What you can argue with is, okay, you're the market leader, you have a commanding lead, and now you're getting lazy. Like straight up, Apple is like, yeah, no one's caught up to us yet.

Yeah. So we're just going to wait and see where this goes. And the problem is you can't wait and see where it goes because you're not enabling developers to take it anywhere, right? It's just single-purpose apps. If developers could hack this way you can hack a Mac or hack a Windows PC and like enable multitasking. Yeah.

Or, I don't know, like add extensions to the operating system in a real way that isn't just like share buttons. Yeah, then fine. Apple, like, leave it alone, let the developers take it. Well, you get real extensions in Safari. Kind of. I mean, it's... And photo editing.

Yeah. That's about it. But like, when I had my first Mac, like, I used the operating, like, Apple used to do this thing where they would like look at interesting extensions to the operating system and then buy them and incorporate them in the operation. Right, right, right. Right. And there's just no way for that to happen on the back. It's, I mean, and it is problematic for them because it's a great piece of hardware. It's probably the best tablet you can buy. It will do the most things it has the most apps. It has a camera that is just under the passable level. It's right there. It's like winking at you. Yeah. But no. Okay. And then you reviewed the iPad many things. Which is an iPad mini two with touch ID for $100. Yeah. And every review I read was like just buy the other one. Yep.

I've never read so many reviews or like buy the other one. Yeah. It's insane. When's the last time, I think Mark German was talking about this on Twitter? Like when's the last time any Apple product has been by last years instead? Right. Ever.

Yeah, I can't think of it. I'm trying to figure out why it exists. I'm super good. I mean, so I tried to figure it out and I gave up on the answer, but Apple likes to do this thing where they give you the new one at the exact same price points. So it seems like Apple is fixated on price points more than anything else. Yeah. And so they kept the price point because the new one costs it. And usually every year,

that's a really good deal. Oh, man, I can spend the same amount of money and get this awesome new thing. Sure. This year, like, I don't know. Like, not having touch ID is a little frustrating on an iPad. Because if you're used to using an iPhone, you pick it up, you're like, oh, crap. Yeah, happens to me every time. Yeah. But is it $100 more frustrating? No. No. Absolutely not. No, it's not. Yeah. It's bizarre. I mean, Apple's iPad lineup is now so confusing. There's the iPad Mini, the iPad Mini 2, the iPad Mini 2, the iPad Air 2. Yep.

Which one's better? The iPad Mini 3 or the iPad Air 2? iPad Air 2. Well, yeah, but like, that makes no sense. Like, you're just flat, like, in a store that makes no sense. Well, and they renamed the iPad Mini with Retina Display to the iPad Mini 2 a year later, which is strange. It just, like, I just don't get it. And this is a very unappily thing to do.

Like, skews are fine. Like, they have the storage options and certain cell service and whatever. And that's all fine. Are we going to talk about 16 gigs skews and how that's absurd and offensive? No, but they sell those to, like, random, like, enterprise institutions and schools and stuff. Like, there are random places that run one app on an iPad. Right. Yeah.

And that's fine. Like, the kiosk you mount somewhere doesn't need 32 gigs of storage. Right. It needs 128. Right. and LTE Yeah, the iPads we have that manage our meeting room calendars

We should buy the cheapest one Oh, actually And oh, did we? I'm sure that Chris talked about this After I got off the Verge live show last week But the SIM is really great Oh, the Apple SIM. So it's not rolled out yet.

So arguably the coolest feature And God only knows how this will actually work Is that Apple built a reprogramable SIM Where it works with most of the carriers Except Verizon in the U.S. and England, I think. Yeah, in the U.K., I think it's EE and somebody else. Anyway, it is the thing that you want all cellular things to be,

which is you can open a screen, you can look at the available networks and how much they cost for, like, a week, and buy it for a week, and then turn it off, and then switch carriers and buy it for no other. Yeah, that's amazing. And it's the exact same thing as Apple Pay. They're not the very first manufacturer,

very first carrier to have reprogramable Sims, but they're the first important one. Yeah. It's going to be a big deal. And Chris's whole theory. that they'll come to the iPhone next year. But we'll see how that goes. I think carriers will always demand locked phones.

Yeah. And if you buy an iPad from an 18T, it'll be locked. I was going to say, I think that's still what's going to happen. And the problem is Apple doesn't sell unlocked iPhones. It nearly the same volume it sells unlocked iPads. So it's most people buy iPhones directly through their carrier. Right. Which is why you've had to wait, you know, 11 and a half years for your iPhone or show.

Yeah. No, I bought my iPhone from AT&T. I signed up for Next, which is extraordinarily confusing. I did that too. Actually, I looked out when I signed up for next. You both just lit money on fire. No, no, no, no. You both know that.

You're okay with that? I signed up. I don't know that I did or not. I was, I don't know. I don't know how much it will cost. Here's the thing that happened to me. You guys, can I just have like a hundred bucks? I signed up for Next. Don't ask what?

HTC 1M.8. I started making payments on that. Everything was fine. And then I finally gave up on 18T, New York. I'm switching to Verizon. So I went to cancel my contract. And I said, what's my cancellation fee?

What's my ETF? You don't have one. Because of next. I switched to next and all I have to do is pay off my phone and I'm done. It like it like it like it like it voided out my ETF. Listen to what you just said. Instead of calling it an ETF, you're calling it a phone payment. Like I don't get it.

It's paying off the subsidy on the contract. Either way, give me $300 and you can be out of your contract. I'm just saying man. The feeling that like I wasn't technically under contract was great. Whatever makes you guys feel better. No. Here's the thing. I went.

I try, okay, so I don't, it was like, I don't want to use the AT&T website. That's a fact. It's the thing I know in my heart. So I like went to Apple to buy the phone and, you know, I do all the rig and roll. Like, we have a family plan. Everybody in my family lives in a different state. Yeah. So everybody has to go to the AT&T website and change a billing address to order a phone to have it shipped to them.

It's true. Little AT&T hack. So you can't go on like the same day. You can't ship it to a different. No, it has to ship your billing address. It has to ship to your billing address. So if you're like me and there's Wisconsin, Illinois, and New York, everybody is logging in to change it to their house. So that's bonkers.

So if two of you are at the store at the same time, you're just screwed. I have been in an AT&T. This is a true store. I've been in the AT&T store on 14th Street in 8th Avenue, New York. And I have tried to buy an iPhone. And they've said, no, you can't because you're not from the same state billing address. and I said, give me a computer. I logged into the AT&T account.

I changed the billing address and I was like, what now? And they sold me the phone. Wow. Did you say just what now or did you say what now? No, actually, I didn't pay for anything. I shoplifted the phone and ran away, very angrily. Took the computer too.

And they called my dad. My dad came and picked me out. He was going to be angry with me. It was a weird time. I don't know. early 30s. That makes no sense. No, so anyway, so I went to Apple and I tried to do this.

And Apple definitely popped up a warning that was like, you will kill whatever discounts you have on your mobile share plan. Also pick a new data plan. We suggest 300 megabytes. And I was like, I don't know what this is doing. Like, this is chaos. And if I keep going down this road, I will end up on the phone with AT&T, which is a waking nightmare.

So I like stopped and went to use the AT&T website, which was equally confusing. but somehow just cajoled me into signing up for next. Got you good. I mean, buying an iPhone is so hard. It's so difficult. Like, I was like, I want to buy an iPhone 18T. I'm ready.

I have upgrades. I've been a contract. I've been a customer for a decade. I've had the same phone number this whole time. And I'm like, but what about this confusing new choice? No, see, mine was the best because I went into the Apple store at Grand Central in New York. And I went up to the thing. I was like, hey, do you have, I wanted space gray, 64 gigs.

Verizon. It's like, do you have any of those? He goes, no. So I'm still, I don't move. I stand right where I am. I open up my phone. I buy one on the Apple store app and I hold it up and I say I bought one. And then he hands it to me and I leave. Oh my God. That's what happened. It was the most insane thing I've ever experienced. Where you bought one from the store? I bought, yeah, I bought one from that store. Oh, and they did in store pickup. Did in store pickup on the, like I bought one on the review unit six that I was holding in my hand. So I used an iPhone 6 to buy an iPhone 6. And then literally, like, it was, I didn't mean it to be mean, but it was super mean.

I was just like, I bought it. And then I just, like, sheepishly handed me a phone. I just, like, danced out of the store. Maybe let's just go to a store. And I have to figure out to cancel this order. I made an AT&T. I don't know, Space Gray 128, 18T. Just if it's out there, it's the way to go.

Just float to me. Just come, bring it to me. Bring it to me. Okay, can we talk about Google? I want to talk about email. I've been using inbox obsessively for like 24 hours. Do we talk about the IMAX for four seconds? It's pretty.

It's over there. It seems a little slow. It's not slow. It's not slow. John told me it's slow. John thinks things that are slow that are not slow. The first generation of every retina computer has been slow. No, but it's not.

But what it's not is like exceptionally fast. You don't get the sense that like, and we're using the crazy specked out iMac. Yeah, we have like a terabyte of flash. It's a monster of this thing. Like I was telling you, either before you, like, you download a huge app,

and then you, you know how you drag it to the applications folder? Like, I keep dragging it and nothing happens. And then I drag it again, and it's like, you already copied this gigantic file.

I'm like, whoa. But, like, it's very fast. It does its job really well. But, like, I, and I,

you know, I'm playing crazy games with the graphics all the way up and it works great. But, like, all the power in this thing is very clearly required

to make it run well. Like, I worry a lot. about the base model of this thing. Like the one that's $2,500 might feel like that. Yeah. And that's what I worry about. Like, I need to actually get my hands on one of those to figure out whether that's true

or not. But like, I feel like I'm right at the ceiling of like what feels great. And I'm using the crazy spec-out one. Right. No, and that's what I'm saying. Like the first 13-inch retina MacBook Pro, definitely the 15-inch, the first 15-inch pro, they all kind of like struggled. Yeah.

And like this one is beyond like... They had to build crazy custom parts. You can't use it in Target Display Mode because DisplayPort won't drive that screen. Right. I mean, the screen is insane. Yeah. Like, just full stop. It's an unbelievable screen.

Right. It's like, it's the best computer monitor I have ever used, and I've used a lot of computer monitor. Yeah. No, I mean, Apple, I mean, that's where they're putting their money. Like, it's interesting that they've revved the Mac to a point where everyone's like, I want to buy a new Mac. Right. No one I know is like, I want to buy a new iPad. Yeah.

I wonder, like, the, I wonder how much Apple has shown. shortened the upgrade cycle of a Mac over time. Because I think for a long time, you got a Mac, and then when it died, you bought a new one. And I get the sense, just this is purely anecdotal, but like, I see people wanting to upgrade more frequently now because they're doing things that matter more. Interesting. Right. And this is, it's possible that this is a total lie. With Google to make Chrome sucks slightly more every year until you have to.

It's possible. You just have to get it. Dude, I was hoping that the, um, the arrow get upgraded. Because Becky's MacBook Air is like, it's the one we bought from Dieter. Yeah. When Deeter first moved to New York, or when we moved to New York, we bought Deeter's old MacBook Air. Because he was, I don't know why you were selling it, but we just bought it from you. Yeah.

And this thing is just like, the fan is on. It's just a low-level noise in our apartment is the fan of this MacBook. And I refuse until there's a retina air to upgrade it. Yeah. It's real sorts of tension in my life. Well, the running theory is that they're waiting for Broadwell, which has been super delayed from Intel and I like that seems entirely logical to me. Yeah, but just announce it.

You know, just like, let me know it's coming. Yeah, but they don't do that with Macs except the Mac Pro. Like if it looks like Darth Vader, they, they announced it at a time. But otherwise, I'm going to end up buying a MacBook Air and because that one's going to explode. Yeah. But like I legitimately wonder if what they were, what they didn't do. Faster than that era by this. Yeah.

But like I wonder if part of the empty space that we felt in that Apple Keno was that MacBook air not being there. And it had been planned for for so long that they had set all this stuff up and then it disappeared. And like, I'm sure it was months ago that they figured out this wasn't going to happen. That's possible, yeah. I wonder if that's that empty space. Because if they had been able to come out and say all of our Macs are retina now, like, that's a big deal.

Yeah. That's a thing they get to really come out with. We've known that Broadwell is delayed for a long time for like two, three months at least. Yeah, but they, like, the actual time of the delay is forever unknown. And delay means different things to everyone else than it does to Apple. Yeah, far, very. Apple's like, we built, we built you a factory in town. Yeah, exactly.

So, I mean, that's like, that's just a conspiracy theory, but I wonder. By the way, speaking of the factory conspiracy theories, that makes no sense. GT advanced? Yeah. Do you hear this thing? Like, the court. They're giving up on Sapphire? No, they're selling this company that was building Sapphire as twice for Apple, like, went into bankruptcy.

They're selling all their furnaces. And the bankruptcy court was going to release, like, the contractor and affidavit from the CEO of the company, detailing what the contracts look like and all their deals. and the judge, and Apple's like, we gotta silence this, like we shut it down, it's gotta stay secret, and the judge was like, I don't know why, it doesn't make any sense, and Apple immediately settled. Wow, we're done.

I mean, I feel like the only other way that story ends with is like, and then he was found dead the next morning. He then died. It's an old joke. Okay, let's talk about Google. So you went to Google. I have to say the nexus rollout,

just weirdest rollout of any product I've ever seen. It is a bonkers weird rollout. They announced it with a blog post. Yeah. All like Nexus 6, Nexus 9 and Lollipop. Yep. And the Nexus player. And the Nexus player.

Just like a blog post. And then they let some media us included. Thank you, Google, to go, like, do a hands-on. And there's a lot that is new in Lollipop. Like a lot that isn't even out really, that people just don't know. And rushed through that. And then they're going to do, instead of an event, they're going to do like an open house thing, I guess.

Yeah. It's a weird rollout. Like, you've got legitimately good products. Yeah. These are like the tablet. It's a little thicker than I'd like, but it's fast. It's good. And the Nexus 6 is like great.

It's a huge MotoX. It's a huge MotoX. And it's fast and lollipop looks great on it. I like that code name was Shamu. It's perfect. They're very straightforward of those. what this thing is. They're like, it's big and you'll love it.

Like Shamu. Google could have done a keynote. They could have done a, let us tell you what Lollipop is. Let us show you a big ass phone. And here's a tablet with a all new processor. And work. It's like K1, right? Yeah.

Natagra. That's just isn't, that's never been Google's style, though. It's weird. Like the other than I.O. Like Google just doesn't have big events. Yeah, but it feels like. events. They do like little like room events and Sundar gets up and talks about the Chromebook pixel.

Yeah, that's always Sundar being like, look at this trackpad. And that's it. That's the whole thing. It feels like, it feels like a lot of companies are super reflexive against being compared to Apple and Apple events. Yeah. So Microsoft for Windows 10. Oh yeah. The had event. They basically like had like a very like they invited people like a living room like watch television. Like I mean it was like that size. Yeah. And they're very clear like we don't want to make a big deal out of this. Like. There is the sense that you, that having a big event against a product sets expectations that you will like have people waiting in line to buy it later. Right. That's fair. But Google, I mean, I just don't know what they're doing. Like, there's, okay, you can make it smaller, but like show up and tell people about all the stuff you made.

All a story. There's a story to tell about this thing. Like we heard the material design story at I.O. But the full story is like really good. the, my favorite thing, probably, because it reminds me of WebOS, is the multitasking thing is now called Overview. And you can have multiple cards per app. So when you create a new email, it creates another card in the overview. So then you can switch between your draft and your inbox or your draft in one of your Chrome windows.

It's like window switching. Yeah. And there's like lots of little tweaks. There's ambient light sensor. they've created a new version of Do Not Disturb that it's called Priority that lets you allow certain apps to notify you when you're in priority mode

and other apps can't and you can choose it granularly one by one. There's just lots of little tiny tweaks that add up together to like this feels different. And I wish that I could, I can't wait to review them basically because just playing around with it, Android's always had this reputation of like

it can do more, like it feels more. productive and because we're Google apps users we definitely feel that way right um basically take that make it really colorful and bright and like a little bit like you know more animation and like more tactile in the design of it and then increase the productivity of it right that's that's that's they're definitely pushing android farther right and then put that on a big ass phone yeah like it's great is it is it gonna run on the Nexus five yeah so if what you're saying is i should continue using my Nexus 5 and then glue like a like a Canon G7 to the back of it. Yeah.

And then that should be my phone. I'm just waiting. I'm hoping that saves my Nexus 7. It's not going to save my Nexus 7, which resets every 20 minutes. Nothing. No Nexus 7 has ever lasted for more than eight months. But it fits my back pocket. No one argued with me.

I mean, you're not wrong. I mean, an XS, like literally the world's most disposable computer. Yeah. Yeah. Like it costs nothing, right? It costs $1.79 or $1.79 or whatever. Like, I bought this. Here it is. It's in my house.

Eight months of joy. And then something bad will happen to this. Have I ever complained publicly about AT&T and the Nexus 7? I mean, when do we not complain about what? When you put an AT&T SIM card into the Nexus 7, it turns off the ability to tether. Yeah, of course. Yeah, super normal. It's great.

Thanks to AT&T. Well, it's Google. Google made the decision. Anyway, Google made a decision not to support AT&T's feeling. So I live a life. I have 18T iPhone. That's like, that's a thing that just keeps happening. Come over to,

come over to Verizon, man. That's great. It's like, I can't. I gotta drag the whole. It's like Darth Raider, Darth Vader, but his suit of Redder.

Darth Raider. No, it's like, no, you know Verizon is a Jami Star Wars. It's the Imperial Guard and the Red, red coat. Yeah. I forget what they're called.

Anyway, Nexus 6. Nexus 6. It's, it feels like a big MotoX. The back is, it's not soft touch like a standard Nexus. It's like this hard eggshell plastic thing.

Can you customize it? I don't know. Yeah, that'd be cool. Screen's fine. I mean, it does indeed look like a gigantic metal. And that it's exactly what it is. So it's really thicker than an, it's weird.

It's thicker than a 6 plus, but it has the exact same battery. Hmm. My question is where are they going to sell these things? Everywhere. For 649. No, no, no. With the carriers. How much is.

All the carriers are signed on. That's the whole point. Dan Seaford wrote a really good article about this. This is a nexus where the carriers are back on board. Right. Yeah, it's the stupid TikTok of Google loving and hating carriers. Right, right, right. But, like, that to me makes it all the weirder that Google didn't have an event here.

Like, if this is a play, like, if they're doing something here, they're really making a move towards this being a big deal. Why would you not talk about it? Verizon selling this product. I'm 90% sure. I guarantee the Verizon one comes out eight months late and this cripple. And it's actually just a Nexus 5. here it is it's bigger

yeah it is coming to Verizon yeah I guarantee I gotta find out if I can get it multiple colors are you can you order right now probably I ordered the Nexus 5 on the Vergecast they might as well order the Nexus 6 well let's see there's also the Nexus 9

which is really interesting talk about the Nexus 9 while I order this Nexus 6 the Nexus 9 is it's an HTC thing and since it's made by HTC it's a little bit thicker than you hope but it's 8.9 is a really good

screen size yeah yeah it is it's 4 by 3 Yes, finally a 4x3 tablet. Yeah, it's more portable than an error in terms of like fitting in your bag even though it's thicker, but it doesn't feel constrained like a 7-inch tablet. But the idea of buying a 7-inch tablet right now is insane to me. No, I think... Do I want midnight blue or cloud white?

Oh, pre-orders available starting in 1029. Yeah. Come on, man. Here I am. Here I am. Look, it is weird that they would... You can pre-order an X-S-9 right now. Like, why prevents...

Although the base model of the Nexus 9 is 16 gigs. Which is offensive. What? The base model of the Nexus 9 is 16 gig. No, 16 gig tablets. That's, uh, stop doing it. That's all you get.

The big question is, will they get, um, well, will material design feel good on the big tablet? It did to me. Will they get developers to make apps to feel native to a tablet size? And will this K1 processor end up being a flu? Because wasn't the first Nexus that had a, like a tegra? Yeah. And then it was like, oh, this is amazing. And then it turned out, no, not really, not so much.

The Nexus, the Nexus one had an O-MAP 3. No, I meant the first Nexus tablet. Oh, yeah, yeah. Right. So, yeah, I, I legitimately don't, I feel like I don't trust Invidian-a-Media-a-Processor. The K-1 is by basically every objective measure, like a monster of a processor. Yeah, yeah. And I have, I've never read anything that says otherwise, so I have no reason not to believe it.

It was fast. But Motorola has a long history, a long and checkered history of using weird processors and then making slow phones and making slow devices. Yeah, but those were all from like TI. And like, hey, media tech, one of the best trends. The Nexus 6 is a standard Snap Dragon 805. Yeah, because that's the

phone and the phone has to be good. Is that we're saying? Like here we made another Android tablet. Like four people will buy it and the processor will be weird. The battery life will be low and maybe it'll get really hot and no one's going to make apps for it. But our phone is really good. That's your whole story.

What was the, what was it, what was it, the, what was it called? The bacon. The jet stream? The jet stream, known that cost all the dollars. Yeah. And just did nothing. Yeah. Like the flyer.

How much longer was the tablet? Last. 10 minutes. Like, they might have died while we were on this. What about the re-camera? I want to, two years. Two years. That's my call.

Two years? Yeah. I buy that. Death watch. It's on. There it is. Mark it down. I think two years might be too long.

Today. I think Lenovo buys HTC in the next like four months. Remind me in two years that HTC is dead. Here's your reminder for October 23rd, 2016 at 9 a.m. Yes. At 9 a. Okay, I'll remind you. Got it.

I'm checking. I don't know. What else you guys want? Let's talk about inbox. Let's talk about interior design. Inbox, new app. You should talk about all of the new stuff. We all have it, right?

Can we just make everyone super jealous? Have you guys got it? You are not getting invited. Yes. I have gotten, I do not have invites. I'm not kidding you when I say I've gotten

600 emails today asking for it. I'm super sorry that I'm not replying to you. And everyone's very polite about it too. They're like, I know this is such an intrusion on your email, but if you don't give me an invite, I'll murder your face. Yeah.

No, it's literally everyone. It's like, it's like bullies from high school who found me on Facebook, like eight-year-old kids in India who are like, will you be my friend? Like, just the whole world,

like entrepreneurs in Germany. It's like just everyone is like, maybe you'll invite me to inbox. Anyway, but it's material design and I think it looks pretty awesome. The only thing I don't like is that they use the color for the different bundles to indicate what section. Well, talk about what a bundle is. Go through the. Okay. So the idea is your inbox is a pain and Google's been trying to fix it a bunch and they've tried different things.

And one of the things they recently tried is they made tabs for like your forums and your promotions. And those are terrible and I hate them. I agree. I hate them. They're the worst. They don't work. Right. Is the problem.

I actually think it's a good idea. And I think bundles are a good idea, but they don't work. So what they've done is they've put everything in a single reverse chronological list. But if there's a bunch of emails that all fit into a category, like a bundle, like your flight information or whatever, they stack them all together. And then you can go in, get rid of the ones you want, keep the rest of them. Yeah. They also do this thing where they display information from within the email and a card right there in the main inbox. So flight information, package tracking, I don't know, addresses, whatever.

So, like, I'm looking right now, I just got a, I got a pitch from a company that's talking about bikes. And they sent me a YouTube, a link to YouTube that's, like, in line in the email and attached an image. And both of those things are surfaced right on my inbox. They've made it really easy to dismiss stuff. They've added the, they've added reminders. So you can, like, just toss a reminder in there. It also shows up in Google Now. They've made it really easy to, like, categorize stuff.

they've done a really good job or it'll do like heuristics so if you say call nilai then the reminder will actually have nelai's phone number right there in the list so i can just tap it i mean that part is all cool like the notion that email is like a never-ending incoming stream of information and somebody else should process it for you yep and make that information useful in a way that doesn't require you to think is maybe the smartest idea about email like ever it's very clear an offshoot of like google now yeah well and they've also done a really good good job of taking that concept but not making you feel like you're out of control because the idea of a computer figuring out my email for me and like the way mailbox does it for example oh by the way

inbox does all the mailbox stuff so you can snooze it so it'll appear when you get to work or like four hours later or whatever um but mailbox does this auto categorization stuff we're at auto hide stuff and that's freaky like i'm still nervous about spam filters that i'm going to lose stuff there but this does all of that auto stuff without making you feel like you've lost control of it you can still go there and you don't miss anything. I mean, it's very clever. It's a lot of very clever ideas with you know.

I think most of the other ideas I've seen about email, apart from mailbox. And that's really the most interesting other email client I've ever seen. Mailbox is like built on like IMap hacks. Right. Right. It makes all kinds of janky folders all through your email. If you go back to it, it's like, wow,

mailbox ruined everything. But most other email, like, you know, Every time Apple does a new iOS or they do a new OS 10, they spent like three minutes talking about like the weird mail app. Yeah. It's like we added VIP folders. And it's like nobody wants those. Like nobody, it's,

there's this game that we're playing where computer power users are like deep, they're lost deep in the weeds of like workflows. Right. And you can add like power user features that like make one tiny weird workflow better. And then like a thousand people are happy. But for most people, email it's like I don't have a workflow but here's this never-ending flood of shit right and somebody else please deal with it well but that that to me is not the like they're on the wrong side of that conversation but the wrong side of the conversation that everyone is on the wrong

is like everybody writes this think piece every day where it's like email's not the problem we are right like the idea that we use email wrong and that email should be like a mailbox where we keep letters to each other as opposed to like anything else like that's what all of these things are trying to get at. And that's what Sparrow was for a long time. It's like, write letters. What this is, is Google saying, here's how you use email. It's a stream of shit that you have to do something with. Sometimes that's just make it go away.

Sometimes that's take action. Sometimes that's response. Sometimes that's call Neli. And what it's doing, it's always. It's always called Neli. The speech you're giving me right now is precisely the speech that the product managers gave me when they first introduced the product. It's like, we are, we love email.

We aren't going to like fix it. we're going to fix it by fixing it for you, not trying to change people's behavior. You're always going to get promo emails. You're always going to get flight information sent to you. You're always going to get this crap showing up in your inbox. So let's make the inbox better. Right.

And the idea is not like we're not using email wrong. We're using email the way we use email. And this to me is really exciting because it's the first thing that actually sees the way that we use. I will ask you, my friend, who loves standards. Oh, it's the worst. Why you're okay with this. Because this is the end of like email as a standard, right? Where you can have it on a mail client and plug it directly into Gmail.

It's getting access that nobody else is getting. There's a Gmail API coming, right? Yeah. Well, it's supposedly. Support this stuff. Yeah. But they announced it. Anyway, but like this is the end of email as like a standard service that you can sign up for and plug shit into.

But we had it, we had a beautiful hundred years where we were able to communicate with each other not via corporations, not by like surfdom or paying some. somebody to do it or we could pay the government, you know, the post office to do it. And then we had the internet and there was a beautiful open time there. But that time is over. The only way to communicate with each other is by paying somebody else. It's going to cost me 20 bucks just to say, wait, wait, wait, how would you, if you were just in the 1800s?

Yeah, you had the Pony Express. You had to pay the Pony Express. Yeah, but it was run by the government. And that was like, that helped. Why did that help? Because it was still a communal thing. No, I'm saying we had a beautiful, like, wanting to pay for your phone, but not your carrier.

Right. Western Union was a corporation. Yeah. Okay. We had a beautiful 50 years then. Where, like, standards of the internet, like, let you do whatever you want. Yeah. You wouldn't need to pay a corporate entity in order to communicate.

We let that go. It's over now. Because they made it better. This is legitimate, like, my first email experience was on Pine. Yeah, mine too. Yeah. Right? Like, I paid a lot of money to go to that college.

Pine was awesome. That's all I'm saying. Like, I used to pay. A while before that, then I paid whatever crappy Wisconsin Inc.in. Inc.com. But then it got better. Yeah, but only because of more and more corporate

involvement. I disagree with your premise. Well, you're wrong. When did you not have to pay with a corporation to communicate with somebody at a distance? When you went to school, you know, you went to college or went to high school and got a free email address. But when you had, like, okay,

like how deep do you want to go? set up your own server with an email thing on it in your house and you plug it into the internet. Okay, fair. That's the one. Yeah. You could do that. You can still do that. Yeah.

But the best experience is to like give it to Gmail, like to Google. Right. And let Gmail like filter out your flight information and pop it up in Google now. Yeah. And to just trust them completely. Because not only are they reading your email for ads now, they're reading your email to give you information, which is fine. It's fine. I'm not, I'm not going to go stalem it on this thing.

But at least accept that we had some like openness and inner community. communication between things. And we had a chance to, like, build an open ecosystem where there could be an email store. And then there could be a plethora of apps that were able to communicate it as first-class citizens. And we don't live in that world anymore. It's just like Twitter. There was a time when Twitter was, like, a place where things went. And there was an open system for apps to talk to it.

And we don't live in that world anymore. And that Twitter is... And maybe that world is better, but we should admit that, like, we had a chance to build it a different way and chose not to. I don't think... In the case of Twitter, that world is just clearly not. better. Right? Like, because...

Oh, well, which world is not better? The one we live in now. I completely agree. Here's the thing with Twitter. Twitter is a very pretty hate machine. Good. Good.

Nice job. It's a 25th anniversary? 30th or something? That was, that was, yeah. Maybe it was great. No. If you look at Twitter, like there used to be like a wide, like a wide ranging amount of innovation that happened, right?

Because everyone was making Twitter apps. Right. Yep. Lots of people were like innovating. different things or pushing the service in different ways and it was like a it was a playground what Twitter was built on that's like how app replies and hashtags became a thing

was like they put out a small thing but that wasn't happening email right and I couldn't tell you why but it certainly wasn't happening email what's and so it's weird it wasn't happening until a few years ago when like Gmail apps started percolating up it happened because there was a lack of a decent Gmail app on iOS

and a lack of a decent mobile email app that wasn't called Blackberry that's what that's what it was Right, but if you think about Twitter, like this base of innovation, you think about Twitter, when Twitter closed their platform off, like the innovation stopped, right? And Twitter has a lot of work to you know how to figure out all the innovation needs to do around like harassment and abuse and then making money and then like questions you to Twitter. But if you think about, actually I got to stop you. But as you watch email as the email funnel closes, the innovation rate is actually increasing because these companies are differentiating their core email experiences. Right. As opposed to like their email apps that plug in a different provider.

Sure. Well, so maybe it looks, it's more like messaging apps than Twitter, where you have this proliferation of things that are. Well, that's another place where like we, like, I'm not saying that the open interconnected world is always better. I'm just saying that like there's things that are valuable there that we're not going to have. I also think it's always better. I mean, like, what if you could only, it's text messaging versus messaging apps, right? Like, people use messaging apps, but everybody, if text messaging went away tomorrow, everybody would revolt. Right.

Right. Like, because that's how we connect to each other. And if you couldn't just make phone calls to other people, if that wasn't. an identifier. And that's like, that's the thing to me is that's what's the, you know, the conspiracy theory, logical conclusion of all this is that eventually my Gmail address will not talk to your outlook address. Right. Right. And that's like, that's not inconceivable. And when that happens, email dies. Like, flat out it dies. Yeah, but there's too many. Email becomes a gammer. Like, it's a corporate communication tool. And that's when Slack kills email. Right.

But I, that'll never happen. No, I mean, it won't. But that's, that's the danger. Right. Like, what we're talking about is fundamentally that danger that they stop being able to talk to each other. Right. No, the danger. But we build the messaging app world like that Hellscape that you're describing with email. Right.

We decided to do it that way. Right. And it's... They were decided. We just let people do whatever they want. Right. Yeah. Well, there was a period where, like, Microsoft was in trouble for not in communicating the way they were supposed to with AOL or whatever the deal with. No, it was in trouble. AOL was in trouble from not opening it to, yeah.

But like, that... Yet another story of Will missing the boat. Yeah, but like AOL opened it up. then what happened? Like, yeah. I mean, it's just,

I don't think that these apps are in any, like email will persist because there's enough commercial incentive for every company that exists to want to be able to reach everybody and everybody has an email address. Well, apparently not,

according to Twitter. Huh? What? The digits, the new developer platform? Oh, yeah, that was a solid segue.

Right? It was well done. This guy. I wish we had a noise. Yeah. I should preface this by saying I am a long-time friend with the main guy that presented the new Twitter thing. His name is Michael Ducker.

Okay. Well, then you have to leave because you're clearly biased. Gamergate. Can you start yelling Gamergate anytime you're mad at somebody? Actually, I'm going to imagine the world where Twitter still had an open API. And the same thing that happens on like WordPress message boards where WordPress blogs where you could sign up for a service that has a blacklist of horrible people and you're like those people don't get to comment on it. And I could have a Twitter app that I could just sign up for the blacklist and then I wouldn't

be like auto, all those people would be outblocked. That could, that would happen in an open ecosystem, which Twitter is not. Right. I mean, at some point, Twitter is having a developer conference this week, so you can't actually get them on the phone. But next week I'm going to talk to Twitter and it like is, we're at the point where speaking of Gamergate, Twitter has to start to be accountable for the that they have let their platform become just a hotbed of abuse, right?

And even just stupid things, like, there are part of the harassment is people making fake accounts and, like, impersonating other people, and Twitter won't verify the real accounts. Yeah. Just won't do it. Who knows why? Because you don't work at the New York Times or you don't work at The Verge. Right, or something, right? Like, it's ridiculous.

You're a game developer. There's, like, all this weird stuff happening around Twitter. Yeah. They need to start being accountable. know for. But that's neither here or there. Because that is the stuff where the platform provider needs to step up and be the central authority. And you can't get it from like a huge responsibility. And to be clear, like, Twitter can't have it both ways. If they want to be like, we're an open platform. We can't stop this. Then, okay, let us stop it. But instead, we're not an open platform. We're in

charge. You have to use Twitter our way. Okay, fine. Then make it not terrible for people that are being abused. Those are your choices. Yeah. I mean, it seems like it would be like, like the Twitter that has always existed is much more the former, right? Where it's like, we're a platform, we're not responsible for how you use it, we build this thing, do whatever you want with it.

But then they shut down the do whatever you want with it part. So they're just like, they're turning a blind eye to something that they're not enabling anyone else to solve. Right. And like I actually don't think Twitter is responsible, but Twitter, or I don't think Twitter should be responsible

for fixing hate speech on Twitter. I really don't. Like it's not, it's the same as like YouTube sort of throwing its hands up to copyright take down. But no, but it's like, it's they they built a thing that you put on what you want and that's what it's made of but what they

need to do is give other people the tools to do it right right well they need to pick one of the other haven't is right you can't have it both works you're right well no but youtube has managed to fix their right they might not like technically have the resources to fix it and we can't be super pissed at them about that it's all super hard problem to solve right oh i disagree i'll be kind of pissed you know youtube comments with two years ago were the worst on the internet And they are the worst on the internet. No, I would, I would tell you that, that wide open, wide open Twitter is worse than YouTube.

Straight up. Why open Twitter is way worse than YouTube comments. And YouTube has all kinds of tools and that. Like, YouTube knows, like, where do most people watch video? They watch it on YouTube, right? They need to, like, protect themselves and shield themselves from all the bullshit that happens on YouTube comments. And they're doing a better job.

YouTube's biggest problem is that the biggest consumers of YouTube are like, 13 year olds right like so they have like bad ideas and they typed them into the text box right like it's not that people are crazier it's like literally that they're not sophisticated right the people who like leave YouTube comments

for the most part are not like are not particularly sophisticated because the majority of them are very very young Twitter's biggest problem is that it's super easy to be horrible right yeah well and also fire it off into the void and be horrible it's super easy to be horrible and but this is the thing that I want right. Maybe I will. I told Dave about it. Not only it's a super easy to be horrible, it's super

hard to ignore it. It's super hard to block it. It's super hard to just move past it. If someone writes a horrible thing on a Nazi site, I just don't go to that Nazi site. Right. But Twitter is there and the moment when you see it and the moment when you process the horribleness that's coming in from you is so short because it's only 140 characters that you can't like, oh, something terrible is over there. I'm not going to do it. It's just, it's there. It's there. and it goes right into your brain. It's very, and this is Twitter's power, right? Twitter's strength is that it was designed for, like,

a click of, like, cool nerds in South by Southwest, like, in 2007. Right. And it's still built on that foundation. Like, everyone should talk to each other. The world will be better. The green revolution will take place. But the reality is they have to balance all that idealism against the fact that horrible people are using it.

And that means giving people tools. And we did end up talking about Gamergate yet again. Whoopsies. Gamergate. Read Chris Grant's piece at Polygon. It's really good. And also Addie's piece today. Addie's piece today is really good.

She's great. Addie and TCR are very fired up by Gamergate. We're just letting him run. The thing I keep thinking is... And Chris Grant and Polygon and Todd Vanderwerf actually has been doing great stuff in Fox. Our company's cool. Yeah. No, a big deal.

Everyone's all fired up. I'll talk about the... What do we got left? Voyage. You want to talk about the voyage? Wait, can we talk about Apple Pay real fast? Oh, yeah. So Apple Pay's out.

It works. You can do it. Did you? I still haven't used it. I used it. How was it? Tell me everything. It was super easy because the technology has existed for a hundred years. No, but you know what I think is really interesting?

Wait, 100 years. 20 Express? Yeah. No, I mean, like, it's out. It's been there. Like, it's not, it's like, it's baked out, right? Like, I opened Apple Pay, I opened Passbook. I didn't even do the thing where I had to take a picture of my credit card.

They're like, do you want to use the credit card to use for Apple stuff? Yeah. And I pushed a button. It showed up. That is a, that is one of the killer features. Do you think Duane really? We should ask. We should call Walgreens and Duane Reed.

Don't steal this story. I'll kill you. Copyright. Hashtack patent. Don't steal the story. We should call Walgreens and Dwayne Reed and see if they had a crazy sales spike in the first day of Apple Pay.

They just sold all the licorice. Yeah, like, seriously. I was like, I'm going to buy this Diet Coke, this pack of Mentos. And I don't know. Make a bomb. Let me get a vaid. And he was like, I bought candy corn.

Yeah. He was like, I don't know why. Everyone bought garbage or the first day out of it. Yeah. Like, this is bad for me. Is this a vape? I'm going to do some vaping today. By the way, I buy...

It's free money when it's up. I buy vapes almost every time I go to a convenience store. This is just a thing that happens. Not CBS, though. Why? CBS doesn't sell them. Why? Because I don't want to buy, like, what I have termed a diesel vape.

So Dieter has a diesel vape. Kyle, who runs our studio has... There are diesel vapes all through this room. They're diesel vapes all through the stream. Like, what you don't know about the studio... Can you, back up, back up, can you explain what you mean by diesel vape? So, okay, so here is, here is, as I understand it, the brief history of vaping. Mm-hmm.

Oh, Lord. It actually goes back to the 40s. It goes back to the 40s. So in the 40s, people were crazy. No, no, no, a brief history of vaping. First, there were electronic cigarettes, which were designed to look like cigarettes. Those are the pens, right? Yeah.

Right? That's like a blue or an enjoy. And that's basically like faking it, right? Like, you're, they're doing a brief history of, like, mass-produced popular vaping. Not your weird, like, underground vape action. Deter was vaping way before vaping was cool.

I'm saying, in the modern era in the modern vape life. Right? So like the last eight months. Yes. First, they were like the fake cigarettes that lit up with blue on the end. Wait, hold on. You can still get those. Who was the tipping point? Like, what was there was, was it like, Ashton Cudger vape this one time?

No, it was those weird ads with the guy in the beach and he had the blues. No, it was Stephen Dorff. It was Stephen Dorff. It was Stephen Dorff. He's walking around the beach and he's like, I can finally be whoever I want to be. And it's like, what you want to be is stupid. Right? Like, this is a stupid ad, but I appreciate your resolve. So, so that was the first gen of vapes.

And then people are like, you know what? This is stupid. I'm not actually smoking. So I want something, I want like a, I want like a monster viz. I want to show off. So then there was like, like, vape hacking began. And that was when diesel vapes appeared on the scene because vaporizers are mostly a cartridge of like the coil and fluid. and then a battery, right?

I just can't listen to this. Just, I mean, so, like, basically what's happened in the world is the batteries are getting crazier and crazier. Like, battery innovation, you know what the next generation of batteries are going to come from? Do you have any idea how many PR pitches are going to get? Deeply addicted to nicotine or they're going to invent the next generation of battery. That's like the problem in the world. Those batteries need to get better.

The batteries need to get better. It's because people are lit on East days all the time. Like, just nonstop. that's what's going to happen. So there's like a brilliant MIT scientist. So my vape is dead and it just runs into the lab. He's like, I've got it. Put it in my veins.

So now all these people, Dieter included, and most of the cyborgs in our studio, all have gigantic batteries on their vapes. Mine's only like $650. But it's huge. It's like a large device. It's like a pen. You can get one at the vape store by my house

that looks like a grenade, has an LCD display, and connects to your phone over Bluetooth. No, yeah. No! Anyway, so I'm not ready to do that. But I like things that light up. And there was a time when I enjoyed nicotine.

And so that combination is deadly. Just dead things that light up in nicotine. Yeah. If it just smelled like whiskey. As a guy who, like, you know, like we run a technology website, like make technology more addictive. Yeah. Yeah. Like, yeah, okay.

So what you're saying is you're like two years away from a battery breakthrough. I overvaped a lot. Like legitimately overvap is like a thing. Every, every, you know, every like Sunday morning I wake up. And Becky's like, how are you? I'm like, well, I overvaped. That would be like, if sublime, we're still around. And she's like, are you sure you didn't.

Are you sure you didn't over drink, Neel? Like, I overvaked. Definitely overvaped. Yeah, that must be what it is. Diesel vapes. We should do a feature on diesel vapes. okay no what that's yours deed like deeters is crazy and like here's what I'm saying this is a standard Joey battery and uh and a modular all of the factories are like next to each other

in China watching people watching people clean their vape is my favorite you guys it's it's you know I wrote this article in July right it's just the most loving careful thing where they're like I'll see somebody who's like angry and just like bang in their keyboard and then they'll take their vape out and just sort of just very careful just like oh no I'm so sorry no I'm saying like we this is like this room behind us you're watching the live stream you get a contact high I mean you just walk out there and you know it's like these people

are cyborgs like the next step is like we will drop lines of nicotine from the ceiling and just pump it into like the matrix constantly as long as it doesn't actually give you cancer in the you know jury still out of that vaping right now I see you look

I see you vaping yes everyone's vaping all the time yeah it's just like it's like in the they like the room blue. So like it's a dull blue light and then like the lights the screens and like the clicking sounds and then just like puffs of smoke. It's what I imagine

like working at Microsoft in the 80s was like. Well that's what I'm saying is we give out coffee that's a drug to keep people awake. Nicotine is just the same thing. It used to be cool to smoke and work. You got your keyboard, you're bagging. It's just and soon we'll give out cocaine. Right. We're getting further away from it here. All right. Let's talk about the Kindle and then we can

No, Kendall voyage. It's great but it's no eBay. It's not a diesel vapor. The first thing to know about the Kindlevoys is... Can it be a new score system? Diesel vapor, not diesel vapes, man? Amazon is really bad at making cases.

This is horrible. This is horrible. This is... No, the origami... This thing is so bad. What is happening here? All of the origami cases are... Nonsense and should be killed. This is the worst.

Like, who wants to... And it doesn't stay there, right? It'll, like, pop off. Yeah, well, it's terrible. Well, what's great is it'll work for, like, a day. Like, it works long enough to get it, like, on the thing, and then you're like, oh, this works. And then the next time...

you try it, it just doesn't work ever again. Yeah. The second thing you need to know is if you've got disposable income, you should buy it. That's fair. Because it's amazing. Okay, so the Voyage's new paperway. It has a much higher resolution screen. It has a glass front. It has buttons that aren't buttons. They're squeezy zones. I don't like the squeasy zones. But the thing

that should just be buttons. Making the display flush matters so much more than I thought. I was editing Chris's review and he went on and on about it and I was like, is this actually that big deal? And then he handed the thing to me And I was like, oh, okay. Yeah. Really?

Yeah. Yeah. Like just the way it feels to change pages now is so much more natural. I like this. It's fine. Maybe I got to take this thing out of the dumb case. Yeah. Take it out of the dumb case.

Yeah. Because I have one. The screen, the text looks great. The auto dimming thing, the auto brightness thing is cool. No, this is the platonic ideal of an e-reader. Yeah, except there's no color. Right. But it's just too expensive.

How much is it? $200. That's too much. Mm-hmm. and stuff. I mean, I bought one. And it immediately got taken by my fiancee to London. And so I haven't touched it yet.

But here's the thing. Well, there you go. But here's the thing. What's interesting about the Kindle is it is the one single purpose device that I buy every time. Yeah. Every time a new one comes out, I just buy it. Instinctively buy it. It's just, the thing that kills me about the Kindle, and this is purely just me being annoyed,

is that, like, if they would put back the headphone jack and support the whisper synchron for voice, I would pay whatever they asked me to pay. Why? Because for me, it's like, the actual value for me of being able to, like, what, what I tend to do, right, is I have like a 12-minute walk to the subway. So I listen to a podcast, and then I read the whole way on the subway. Yeah. And then I walk here.

And, like, if I could just seamless, like, listen to the book, read the book, listen to the book. Like, that's what I want. And I will pay for that. Yeah, absolutely. I definitely can't do that. No? No. You can't do the sync with the audio book and the reading?

No, no, no. Interesting. I love it. And like every time I've done it, the HDX supports it and I use that a bunch and it's awesome. And like it's my favorite thing that Amazon has, the ability to just like completely change context with me where I can like just if I'm listening to a book and then I have five minutes to sit down and I'm like, I want to read. Why wouldn't you just keep listening to the book on the subway? I would rather read. Like just personally, I get more from a book when I read the words. But at the same time, like listening, I don't lose that much listening to the book. If you're, if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're, listen to it on the subway, you might be forced or, and you might accidentally have to make eye contact with somebody. And that can't happen. Good God, no. To how, don't even know. Oh, I'm definitely the guy. He's like, just always, hey. So that's the thing. I don't know where else to look. I look at, I look at, I look at the ground. I look at the ground. This is why I read, because I don't know where else to look, and I wind up awkwardly making eye contact to that.

Have you ever done a thing? You can only stare at the ad for, you're like, you just stare at the ad. No, no, you can just look at the home screen of your phone. But then sometimes the, what's going on here? Man, I wish I had data. My move is, your phone is upside down, by the way,

which is a perfect TV moment there. My move is the headphones not plugged in anything. I just like put the cord in my pocket and then just stand there and I'm like, I can't remember what you're saying. A lot of socially awkward people in this room. No, but it's like it's the people asking for money and I'm just like, I can't.

Oh, yeah, no, it's just other humans. Mine is to just vape as hard as I can. Ken. You do not vape on the train. Overvaping on the subway. Who train vapes? A train vap is the worst. Do you remember the elevator vape that we had to deal with, like, three years ago?

What? There were these people that were trying to do viral marketing for the vaping, and so, like, we got an elevator to go to a bar, and they were blowing vapes and, like, the bouncer's face. You were there. Alvator in a bar. That's all right. People. Nope, don't know.

All right. I overvap a lot. You got vaping. I try only vape on the weekends. Congratulations. Are we done? We got a bunch of stuff to talk about that. Okay, so here's a thing.

We don't know how to do intros. We're never going to figure it out. We're never going to figure out how to those. Negative numbers is a good way to start the show. That's a pretty... Five. Four. Number nine.

Okay, no, here's much stuff. So we are back as a podcast. You may or may not know that. I hope you that you do because you're presuming listening to this podcast. But we're back. People seem to like it. We're going to keep doing it. So we're on iTunes.

We've refreshed all of our artwork. We're going to actually, here's a sneak preview. I think more podcasts from the Verge are upcoming. That's right. We're going to see how that goes. But please go on iTunes, review us, rate us, do all the iTunes stuff that help us make podcasts more successful. Do that. You can tweet at us where the Verge on Twitter on Facebook, where facebook.com slash verge on Snapchat.

Sam was late to Snapchat, but now a monster on Snapchat. We're also, we were also later L.O, which is my fault. We're also the real version Elo. Whatever. Snapchat. Follow us on Snapchat. You miss some sweet Nexus snaps can we just never talk about L.O. Never again. So the real version on Snapchat. And then I have actually very exciting news across. So like I said,

this show is back. We're bringing back some other shows. I'm actually really excited about that part. But as while we were talking 44 minutes ago, the trailer for season two, the teaser trailer For season two, Small Empires went up on the website. Small Empires is back. Alexis O'Haney is hosting it again. This year, he went all over the country.

Some of the stuff looks amazing. Top Shelf is coming back. True story. DP Dose over here. I hate you. First episode is Diesel Vapes. It's actually every episode. It's just one diesel vape per episode.

Oh, John, our producer, wants us to do it. Diesel Vapes, that's a thing. No, Top Shelf is back. It's happening. there are six shows that are coming back and I can't remember all of them. This is my next. It's coming back.

We took a month off because it's been crazy season and now the device, everything's out so we can come back at it. The Big Future, animated series. Which is so cool. If you haven't watched the one today on building a better brain, watch it. It's amazing.

Russell Brandem is the editorial mastermind behind that. He's doing a terrific job of that. Is that four? There are more. There's just too many. There's definitely more. There's so many shows. Anyway, it doesn't matter.

Small Empires is back. Top Shelf is back. This is my next is back. Big Future is here. And we're going to, into 2015, you will see us do more and more video, more and more podcasts. And I'll just put out there. We're going to get way better at YouTube.

That's the thing I want to do. And we have some big ideas about how to do that. So it turns out YouTube is awesome. It's pretty great. It's a place. Except for all the horrible people. Comments. Yeah.

Except for the rest of it. Just never scroll down on YouTube. But we're going to do some fun stuff. there. I think that's a big opportunity for us because that's where you, the people are. Also, other places. Huh? It's our third birthday. Oh, wow. Whoa.

It's been too long. I'm done. I'm out of here. Tear it up a little bit. Yeah. A little. And the ver where, yes, you can also visit us at theverge.com. Yeah. You can email us at vergecast at the verge.com.

Who uses email? Actually, I don't know if you can. You can WhatsApp us. At Verge. Can you can do that? No, you can email us. You should get a WhatsApp.

Dude. If you email us at Vergecast at the verge.com, I, somebody gets it. It's like the biggest social network. Oh my God. You're definitely much better off just tweeting at us. You're much better off. No,

we should have a WhatsApp. We just spent like, come on. We spent like half the episode complaining about Twitter. We have 1.3 million Pinterest subscribers if you're one of them. Just please tell us what you would like us to do with it. Yeah. That's a fact. And I'm sure, you know.

But seriously, follow, like us on Facebook. Yeah, do that. That's like, that's the place. Do you go to your favorite social network and then find us and then do the thing there that makes us the most money. Just do that.

That would be cool. If you want to buy us a sticker on Facebook, that's cool. Can you do that still? Can you buy us a sticker? I don't know. What does that mean? Do you like buy a sticker and send it to us? Send it to me.

I will take all your Facebook stickers. Oh, yeah. Rooms, which has the same exact icon as Slack. Yeah. Cool job Facebook. I think rooms is really stupid. I just want to be on record having said that. When three months from now they're like, guys, just kidding, this is the worst.

I'm going to play this again. They made rooms because Facebook runs its entire business in Facebook groups. They made it from themselves. Fine. Like whatever, Facebook can have that. That's good for Facebook. But, like, build, you know why message boards aren't great? It's because there's many better things than message boards.

message boards are awesome I mean they are for like a small subset of people who read Metafilter and like those people are great and that's fine I wouldn't be here for Wormfer message boards in that there is we're gonna start one there's nothing interesting about that

we're super good it also is just completely antithetical to everything that Facebook has ever said about anything and that pisses me off Facebook's whole thing is a real angry man I just think it's stupid like why Messenger is a thing that makes sense for Facebook here's what's happening to you

and I just want to put this out there go hit me you got a girlfriend. And now Facebook is boring. Yeah. Because it's no longer full of eligible girls. Oh, no, it's still full of eligible girls. Let me just say, knowing full well that my girlfriend will never listen to this podcast.

It is still full of eligible girls. I'm just saying, man. This is the Facebook cycle. No, I still use Facebook. I still use Facebook Messenger. It's all great. Facebook Messenger is not great. Some of the girls who went to my high school are still very attractive.

But, like, I just don't, I don't get why this, to me, feels like Facebook hired, what's his name, Josh Miller, the branch guy. Yeah. And he was like, I want to do this thing. And somebody at face, nobody at Facebook cared enough to shoot him down. Like, straight up, that's what this feels like to me. And, like, it might be a big deal out of this. It might be a good app. They gave, Ellis had an exclusive.

This was like a launch. No, and it's a great piece. Ellis's piece is really good. And, like, I'm happy to just fundamentally disagree. And, like, he makes a lot of good points for why it's valuable. But what I, I think the idea of having, first of all, the fact that, the only way you can get into a room is a QR code is just dumb and broken. Wait, wait, wait.

Yet you missed this? That's how you join rooms. There are no rooms. We're done. Facebook rooms is stupid. You say you tweet a QR code and somebody saves it to their camera roll and then opens the app and that's how you get into the room. You know who's going to figure that out is just no one.

No one. 17 people in the verge room? Listen, congratulations to the 17 of you. Can you send a picture of a vape? Is that possible? Only a diesel one though. I don't have a vape on it. me.

It's such a I'm such a vape nob. No, it's just amateur vape. Vapature. I'm a private vapor. I just want to start singing Hold me closer private vapor

right now and I feel like that means that was our show. It ended strangely, I admit. But do social network stuff. Again, iTunes, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat. L.O.

whatever, man. Please not L.O. Get over. yourself. That was The Vergecast. Thank you for listening. We'll be back next week.