The Vergecast - Apple event rumors, Galaxy Note 8 review, and Loren in zero gravity

Episode Date: September 8, 2017

We’re one week away from The Vergecast Live in San Francisco, so Nilay, Dieter, and Paul talk through the last-minute rumors about what to expect at Apple’s event on September 12th. We also dedicate part of the show to the Galaxy Note 8, which was reviewed on the site this week. And for the season finale of her video series Space Craft, Loren Grush stops by to tell us what it was like being in zero gravity on a parabolic plane. There’s a lot more in between that, so listen to it all and you’ll get it all. 03:14 - Juicero, maker of the doomed $400 internet-connected juicer, is shutting down 06:41 - The Boston Red Sox used an Apple Watch to steal pitching signs 10:44 - Galaxy Note 8 review 31:09 - Space Craft episode 4 with Loren Grush 52:41 - Apple iPhone 8 event: what to expect 1:16:32 - Paul’s weekly segment “Untitled” 1:20:34 - lots of TV stuff Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to the Vergecast. The flagship podcast of the Verge Network Media Group. It's not right. VNM. Yeah. Which is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. That's what I was trying to get to. Yeah.

It's a thing that we're going to start saying now. That's right. Because we have a whole network. And we're the flagship of that network. I just, look, the Ezra Klein shows great. Yeah. But. If I know anything about Barcliffe.

It really is. You're the boat that you believe you are in your heart. Yeah. And that boat's a frigate. Whatever a frigate is. Look, I've been playing a lot of Assassin's Creed black flag. Of course you are. And so much of that game is boat identification.

You were like finally a sequel to Sid Meyers Pirates so you have another boat game. It was just they, I don't know. I just started. It just started happening to me. Anyway, welcome to the Vergecast. I'm here. I'm Neil Epitale. Paul Miller is here.

Hello. Dieter Bone is here. Hello. And here's what I'm going to tell you about the three of us. Next week, we will be taping the Vergecast live in San Francisco on the 13th. That's the day after the Apple events. We'll have a whole bunch of Apple news. And we'll have an audience.

You can be in that audience. The show is going to be at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco. Doors are at six. The three of us will be there. I think there's like a chance that Casey will just rush the stage and be on the show. I would be really disappointed if he does. the stage. Lauren is actually going to cover,

Lauren Good's going to cover the Apple event with us. I'll try to work her in. The crew will be there. The people you love on the Vergecast. Mission Bay Conference Center, 6 p.m. on the 13th. Dieter, what's the link for tickets?

It is bit.l.ly slash the Vergecast SF, not just Vergecast SF, which is what I said last week. That points to the edit page for the event because I screwed it up. Wait to reveal that information. If you see any typos, though. Also, my.

My password is password one, two, three. But no, go, there's a post on the site. We've been tweeting about it. It's on Facebook. You can go to this complicated bitly link. Come to the show. If you're going to be in San Francisco. You're going to be at the Apple event.

You live close to there. I got a tweet from somebody who's flying in to see us. Oh, that's amazing. Oh, my God. Oh, yeah. It's great. We love all of you. We'd love to see you.

Every time we've done a live Vurchase, it's been the most fun. We did a bunch of South by Southwest to remind me last time. They're always great. We love seeing everybody. You can hang out with us beforehand. There's an open bar. It's going to be great. What?

13th, 6 p.m. San Francisco Mission Bay Conference Center. Wow. Come see. It's three of us. You know, while they're Verge staffers, will be attacking us from the wings. It's going to be awesome.

You could also, if you use the Facebook, so you can just search for Vergecast Live on Facebook and you'll find our event page for it. Yeah. Or if you use Google, you can search on Google for Vergecast Live, San Francisco Mission Bay Conference Center, and then probably find something. Right.

And if you use Bing, I'm sorry. Duck, duck, go users. I'm sorry, this is not your day. Anyway, speaking of which, there's a whole bunch of stuff to talk about. We got to talk about, you know, leaks about the Apple event next week are coming fast and furious now. But I want to start with what I think is the most important story in tech ever, which is the Jucero to shut down. Come on. And the reason I want to bring it up, one, they literally just shut down.

And the next day, the founder was like Instagramming from Burning Man. So he's cool. Of course. Yeah. But Paul, the circuit breaker team has been on the, the pod's beat for quite some time. This to me is the most, like the loudest pod failure that has occurred. I mean, the machine was literally loud when it, like, ran the compression thing to squeeze the bag. One of the best things I ever saw about Jucero is a hardware engineer did like a deep blow by blow of how insane.

mainly over-engineered the product is. Yeah. Like, it's basically, it's, it performs a, a function that is sort of a hundred to two hundred dollar range of a function. Yeah. But, they sold it for $400. By the way, in case you don't know what Jucero is, it's squeezed bags of juice. It's a squeezer.

It's a squeezer. So the machine is a $400 squeezer and then then. Which, which, you know. And then you bought a subscription to bags of juice. Of course you bought a subscription. And that's what fascinates me. me about the pod thing. It's this whole thing of locking something down with a combination of an app and a proprietary object. That's really cool. But you're Sarah just made their product way

too expensive. Basically, you can only do that sort of obsessive engineering if you're basically an Apple skill. There's like hardware engineers that talk about it. You're just like, don't try to be like Apple. Everybody, when they try to make a product, they're like, oh, we'll do it like Apple. But like, you can't. And it's not because you're bad at your job. It's because you can't buy a factory to do one part in one really specific way that you want. And if you try to get real specific or try to put really expensive components in, you're not going to have the scale to be able to sell it affordably.

They didn't sell it affordably. Also, then they had the great scandal of, turns out you can squeeze bags with your hands. which was great. Yeah. And there's something just user hostile about having a proprietary bag that you have to scan the barcode and subtract. DRM fruit. Yeah, it had everything wrong. The thing about it, though, is that one of my greatest childhood memories was going to, like, my great aunt's house in Pasadena.

And she had a grapefruit tree. And we get grapefruit right off the tree. And then it had, like, a hand produced juicer, like that fresh juice. It's really amazing. Yeah. And you could get it in a bag. Yeah. And then a robot would squeeze it for you.

Yeah. For $400. Yeah. I don't. For more at first. This to me is just jokes. It was just a joke. $6.99.

There's a really great video. They came to our office and Jake made a video with them. And he, Jake is like a sincere human being. It's a good dude. And he was trying to be sincere. And you just watched the video. And eventually the, just the reality of what's happening just overcomes Jake. You just watch the video.

It's great. Anyway, there's that story. The other second most important story in tech this week, not the Note 8 review, not the iPhone event preview. But the Boston Red Sox were caught cheating. Come on. I'm just torturing you guys with not news before we do this. I love this story. The Red Sox got caught cheating.

It took a lot of baseball knowledge to understand the scope of how precisely it was cheating, how they did it, how the Apple Watch was involved, why an Apple Watch was evolved, who communicated what to who. There was a whole lot of stuff built into this. Here's what I think was happening, given my limited understanding of baseball. You tell me if I got it right. Because I'm a baseball expert. Who's going to talk about? Go ahead. Does anybody know about baseball here?

Are we way out of our depth? Andrew's just shaking his head in the booth right now. Okay, go ahead. You got somebody watching a video feed, zoomed way in on the catcher. The catcher signals a pitch, says do a fastball. Yeah. So the guy who is watching that.

Furiously text messages. Like a coach in the dugout. Somebody in the dugout? Somebody in the dugout. So an assistant coach in the dugout had an Apple watch on. But then they'd have to tell, Like the batter can't see into the... Right, so then they, like, signal...

You need a runner on second base. So they get the assistant coach in the dugout, gets a text on his Apple Watch. By the way, proving conclusively that the only smartwatches are good for is notifications. And fitness. Yeah. By the way, why not have that be a fit-

than a professional sport? It's just like the fact that they did it with an Apple Watch instead of like a Fitbit? You can't cover that. You can't be like, I'm just checking the steps. Anyway. If they have LTE in the next Apple Watch. That's going to be even better.

So that he would get the text in the dugout, communicate to players, and the players would communicate to the runner standing on second base. It's not clear to me what the runner on second base then did. Like if he just started screaming, fastball! Like, I don't know. Because that is not in any part of these stories. The amount of steps, like how many time, I just feel. I know the pitchers take a while to think about what they're going to do and get warm. You're doing great, Paul.

A plus. But that lag, that's just so inefficient. Like the latency on this. You know what baseball is the pitcher like nods and shakes his head at all the different signals? And by the way, the signals change when there's a runner on second base, which is like key to this whole conspiracy. They have to figure out what the different signal is when there's a runner on second because they, They switch it up because they know they're being watched. But they like, they nod their head or shake their head and then they pitch.

You know, the no, no, no, no, no, yes, that one, and then they pitch. I want to see a pitcher just like shrug once. Just be like, no, no, I don't know. Not like nod, not shake their head. Shruggy. No. No, no, no. Just a shruggy.

And then the Apple Watch guy gets a shruggy emoji. Yeah. Anyway, a great story. I'm very excited because Apple is definitely going to reference it at their event. I think so. Yeah. A dad joke of some kind is coming. People are finding all kinds of uses.

for the Apple Watch and put up the Red Sox logo. Yeah, but Apple also doesn't really like to admit that illegal activities exist in the world. No, but they make weed jokes now. Every single Magalette's illegal. But it's pretty legal now. Some places. Yeah. That's true. But that's also just, that's just Frederegi.

I don't know. That's interesting. That's an interesting bet. Will Apple reference? Yeah. I guess it's not super illegal. It's just a funny sports rule. Yeah. It's not like no one's going to jail for this. It's not like they're using their Apple watch to track their steroid usage.

Is there a baseball jail? And can you go to it? That's a story for you. I thought the dugout was the baseball jail. All right, all right. Those are the two particularly silly stories the week. But before we get into all the other stuff, Galaxy Note 8 review hit this week.

It was Dan wrote it. Dan did the review. I will say this. He had it in the office. I was looking at it. My first instinct with that phone was this thing is massive. And Dan was like, it's actually not that big. It's only a little bit bigger than the S8.

You showed me his S8, which is true. It's only a little bit bigger than the surfboard iPhone 7 plus that I'm carrying around. And obviously what's happening is in smaller. So it's only a little bit bigger than the biggest phones. And then Dan is like, well, this phone is huge. Like once you use it for a while, the size of it starts to actually dominate your usage. It's like only a little bit bigger than the S8. I think he tweeted the specs, it's bigger than the S8.

way that the specs do not imply. I think that is, like, fascinating. Like, the note has always pushed the boundary of how big a phone can be, and phones have just sort of followed along in its wake. Have we, have we hit the, like, the peak? I mean, we've had bigger phones before. Yeah. But I think this phone in particular is the phone where, like, you give up on any sort

of, I don't know, idea that you're going to use this with one hand. Like, you don't get a note and pretend that, yeah, it's just like any other phone. It's just a little bigger. I'll figure it out. No, you're using two hands. You're using two hands to unlock it because the other options aren't that good. You're using two hands because you're pulling the stylus out. You're using two hands.

It's just a big giant phone. But the nice thing is that it's a big giant phone that actually takes advantage of being a big giant phone, whereas the 7 plus surfboard just feels dopey because it's got those giant bezos. So speaking of bezels, Jake, I hope he's published this by now. I'm not spoiling it for it. with Jake of Jucero fame. Jake Jucerro. Jake Jucero was writing about the essential phone for our website,

TheVerge.com. And he mentioned that because there is no bezel, the home button, the software home button on Android, ends up being lower in the hand than it normally is. And so that he thought he'd be having more, you know, the phone is overall smaller because it doesn't have bezels. But it was awkward for his thumb to get down to that home. Have you experienced that either of you?

No. No, because I have a pixel. No, it's good. So that has a giant surfboard puzzle. Right. Yeah. You know, it struck me with a note. So Oreo finally hit my pixel, which is great.

It showed me a bunch of fake notifications for like a day and then arrived. Oreo is great. Like, I really like it. But it is apparent to me now. Can you tell the difference between Oreo? in Nuget? Like, I can, because I'm a nerd and I'm trying to, you know, write the review. I'm doing a bad job of it. Forage cast tradition, I admit that I'm working on an article and now I'm forced to finish work on the website.

Yeah. Only, like the things that leap out to me on the pixel, and they, the only things are obvious is the notification shade is different. They're reorganized. I really like how they stick the unimportant notifications in that little secret tray under the main notifications. And obviously it's white and not black. That's the stuff that I think most people would pick up on. What I've picked up on the most is how much faster it feels. It's just a lot smoother. Like the performance of the phone is evened out in a way that I really appreciate. And everything is a little like nipped and tucked. But if you're not looking for it, you're never going to see it. But what that indicated to me, which I think is interesting, because we've given Samsung a lot of

shit for touchwiz over the years. Samsung has accomplished refinement on top of a platform that wasn't refined for a long time. And now I think Oreo is up there. So it's what the value of touchwiz on the note 8 is like all these other crazy Samsung features. Which is always what we have thought of

is the value of touchwiz, the value in quotes. But really, now that I'm playing with Oreo, it feels a lot tighter to me, it's clear that like the work Samsung has done on the S8 and the notes is actually solving some of that performance stuff.

I mean, not solving performance, solving some of the polish. Yeah, I could see that. I would suggest to you that before you make that point too strongly, you use the pixel for six months and see if it still feels as buttery. Yeah, I mean, that's like,

I got a clean install of an operating system, it's great. But yeah, I mean, you know, all the stuff that Google's doing with, like, Project Trouble to re-architect how all of Android works, All that stuff to me seems fascinating, but it's got to pay off, and I don't know if it's going to pay off. So Ron Amadeo did his 20,000-word review last weekend, and he made some really interesting points about Project Treble and how it could possibly make it easier to distribute custom ROMs because all the work that needs to go into making the silicon work with the OS is now like modularized and compartmentalized so that they could just, you could theoretically make a ROM for one phone, and it would work on any phone that. is supported in Oreo Silicon Code, which is fascinating. And then, but the other thing is the background stuff that they're doing to shut down apps

and make them just behave better is going to take a while because apps actually have to target Oreo to follow those rules and they can still ignore them for now. You can go in deep into the settings and start forcing those rules on older apps that may or may not break them. But it's going to take, it's going to take a while for both. both treble and these background processes to actually make a significant difference once you've got your phone loaded up with apps. The thing I'm not looking forward to is, you know how the new version of Android comes out? And then for the next six months, we say, oh, this phone come up, but it doesn't have the new version of Android yet.

When's they going to get it? And then they give us a timeline, and then we see if they stick to the timeline and they never do. And we just have all the saying. Oh, when's the first actual new Oreo phones? What's the new stuff coming out? We've done this every year, right, for eight years, however long. it's been. This year, not only do we have to ask, will your phone get Oreo?

We have to ask, will your phone get Oreo and be trebleized? Because treble is a system for engineer, system to like force everybody that makes Android stuff to make it more easily upgradable by modularizing the stuff, right? But if you are upgrading from seven to eight, you don't have to like buy into that whole modular system. They're giving everybody a pass. And so a bunch of phones are going to get Oreo, but they're not going to be quote-unquote trebleized, which means that they're not going to be on the faster upgrade path to Android 9 when that happens.

It sounds delightful. But won't every new phone have trouble? Every new phone should be strict to the whole. If it ships with Oreo, it should be treble. It's travelized. Yep. Yeah. So we've got one round of flagships happening now that probably won't, is my guess. Correct.

Yeah. But back to the note eight, we got way off track here. Trouble, man. I'm pretty excited. Trouble. It's trouble. Oh, my God. That's a Vurchase, everybody.

We'll see you in San Francisco. I kind of want this live message thing. Yeah. And like the, yeah, that's my favorite part. The little thing where you draw with a message. Like. And it animates when you send it as a gift to people. It's a gift.

So it's usable in the world. Yeah. Not like Apple's weird digital touch stuff. which I would point out, launched two extraordinarily great fanfare at the first Apple Watch. I was so excited about it. And I have never seen one again, basically. I can't even find the little, you know they're a little creepy character? The creepy character?

When the Apple Watch first came out there was like the little creepy face. Little creepy face. Yeah, it was like, it was animated, you gave a nickname. Oh, that guy. His name was Thirsty. That guy. He gave him a nickname on the site. Thirsty.

Just gone. Just disappeared. Someone tweeted at me and Lauren today that last year at the iPhone event when they did new Apple Watch stuff. They're like, we're partnered with Nike, and every Sunday is just do it Sunday. And that's going to, they made all this fanfare about it. It's just one of those things. It's like, all these announcements come, and they wash away in what's left is what's good,

which is fine. But the live message thing on the note feels like one of those things as well, where it's like super fun to play with. And it's a little bit more accessible, but it's going to fade away. The thing I love is because it's an OLED screen. you can write notes on the lock screen and save them as notes on the lock screen and then when you look at the phone,

the notes are just there kind of like dim. So it's like a piece of paper. That's cool. Yeah. Note stuff. It's just like a lot of note stuff. The one thing that is not great, I think, is like the,

you buy the note because you want a big phone and you want a stylus, but there's plenty of other big phones. This is Dan's point. You shouldn't buy the phone because you think the dual camera thing is awesome. Yeah. Because it's fine. Yeah.

I mean, I like that you can, change the focus. You can play with it. They let you into it. After the fact. Yeah, they let you into it a little bit more, which is neat. I'll tell you what I hate about it. It's not the default camera mode because when you do a live focus on the note, it takes the wide angle, it saves a telephoto.

It saves all the data to let you do the blurry stuff. And it just ends up being huge. And as far as I'm concerned, if your camera gimmick isn't the default, then get it out of my face. I'm never going to use it. This is why I get mad at motion stills. It's a separate camera app and a separate mode that you've got to go find. But it's delightful on the iPhone because it's just there for the stuff and you just find it. Oh, look, I have little gifts everywhere that I didn't know I had.

So I hate that you have to turn the mode on. I hate that you've got to check to see if you're taking it the special version of the shot. It's just frustrating. The photos do look good, though. The iPhone portrait mode isn't a default. No. That's what I'm saying. Yeah.

And even live photos aren't necessarily default. Like, all that stuff is annoying. But on the iPhone, if you turn on, on the iPhone, if you turn on live photo, it just stays on. Yeah, pretty much stays whatever you pick. On Samsung, if you turn on things and then you leave and then the app closes in the background, the camera app closes in the background, the camera app closes in the background. When you come back to it, you've got to turn it on again. You can't just toggle it permanently. Yeah.

The photos looks nice. Yeah. I mean, it's Samsung makes good cameras now. It's the S8 camera. I mean, what do you want? And they've added a gimmick. I think the real question now is, okay, dual cameras are going to be a thing. They seem to be coming to all the phones in one way or another.

It's the battle between do you have the normal lens in the white angle or the normal lens in the telephoto? Or the normal in the black and white. I think that to me is the value of having a different focal length is clear of that. Like, I like switching to the zoom lens on the iPhone, and I think it's neat to have a wide angle lens. So we had basically regular cameras. Then we had take multiple images at different exposures really fast, so you have, like, fake HDR. Now phones are faking depth of focus or depth of field. Yeah.

What are they, what, what's the hot? And then there's Instagram style filters to fake, like, old film looks. Like, what's the hot thing that nobody's faking yet? Interchangeable lenses Yeah, I'm with you We're just faking our way back to a DSLR Yeah, I just find it really interesting I remember, like I had a friend who's like

A big live journal person who was putting those Instagram filters on photos before there was such a thing It's Instagram before the iPhone existed, you know Like there's just things that we find really aesthetically pleasing It always blows me away Like when I first heard of the iPhone Doing this fake depth of field stuff was like, that's going to be terrible.

Yeah. But it's really pleasing. Yeah, it's nice. It's just so nice. And it bugs me that it gets me that well, but it really does. I think that James Barham, our creative director, ages and ages ago, wrote a piece for us that did really well about how the iPhone photography revolution is about display and capture being collapsed. So you take a picture on the iPhone, you view it on an iPhone, you probably take another picture on the same device, you view it on. it on and that's great and it's created an entirely new kind of creativity. You make a portrait

mode picture big and you can see where it's failing. Sure. Right. And I think that they have to either ignore it because they know the primary, the primary display of the photos is on the phone. So it looks great on the phone. But the second you push any one of these photos to any other kind of medium, to my eye, they tend to fall apart. And I know that all the companies do the billboards and whatever. But even that to me feels like a trick. Yeah. Because you can take any photo and make it huge and then put it two miles away from your eyes

and it'll look fine. So yeah, I think that's like the that's the goal, right? If you're going to replace the DSLR or the mirrorless camera or whatever, you have to actually make the fakery as good as the real thing. And I think they're, I don't know they're going to layer

on more fake things. I think they've now set up a pretty enormous challenge where if you're going to like, Take a bunch of your wedding photos in portrait mode, and then you print them out. Like, you're going to notice that you didn't, they're not quite as good. They look great on the phone.

And I think that's, like I said, James wrote an entire piece about how that's the revolution. Yeah, when's the last time we printed a photo? I make photos big all the time. Like, I look at them on my laptop and, like, we use, we, you know, we, like, run a media organization. That's true. I look at photos, like massive sizes all the time.

And that's what I mean. The revolution is most people take and view the media on the same device, which has not ever been true before. But Paul's point is if you're making and viewing it on the device, you should be making new kinds of photos that feel native and interesting on that device. That's why, I mean, HGC did Zosies, the Apple did live photo. It's why I love motion still so much. you're taking advantage of the technology of viewing the photos that's better than or more interesting than, you know, a print. And I would like to see more attempts to create stuff that isn't trying to mimic a DSLR, but that's trying to create a new way to experience photography on a phone because that's where everybody's looking at them anyway. Yeah. I mean, I do think that's where like live photos comes in. But just to play a play.

the, I don't know, cranky old person, which is my role in this world. There's something still evocative about like a great still photo, and that's still the thing, you know, that all of the photo sharing apps and services are still built around. And like, you know, Instagram, you know,

there used to be like the hard sort of line where you don't put your DSLR photos on Instagram. That line is gone. Right. Right. And the Instagram filters kind of wear out. They're welcome. And I'm assuming most of these tricks will kind of wear out there.

I feel like HDR was in vogue for a bit and it's less cool now. Well, H.S.R, it's the way Apple does it, you know, you light it up and turn it on and it's HDR. Right. The way Google does, it's just always kind of working to make everything better. It's faded into the background. And I think that's really cool because they're doing yet another trick to fake the dynamic range of a better camera. Like, I don't know if you could call Google's 8.5. HDR, like, high dynamic range.

It's more like dynamic range. They've just added some to it. They're not pushing it to that crazy HDR place. Anyway, that was our conversation with a note 8, which is a phone that you can buy. Last thing, Dieter, I want to ask you, the note 8's really, really expensive. Is it going to be more or less expensive than this presumably very expensive iPhone. Pro.x edition? I think Brian Cheney, New York Times throughout there that the new iPhone is going to start at $9.99, and I believe it.

Yeah. So less expensive. That's something. The phone price war is, I think we're going to have to spend a lot of time talking about it once we have all these numbers in hand. But it's... I was on Lauren's excellent podcast, too embarrassed to ask, talking about the note with her and Kara. And I made the point that I think I've made to y'all before that we don't know what a pro phone means. yet. We know what a pro laptop means. We know why you spend extra money to get a Mac MacBook

Pro instead of just a MacBook. But I don't think anybody really knows other than it's nicer and as a slightly better camera what it means to get a pro phone that actually enables you to do quote unquote pro things that you can't do on a cheaper phone. Yeah. Yeah, I've pretty much determined I'll have to see next week. Maybe I'll just be so blown away. I can't help myself. I don't think I'm a pro-phone person. Yeah. The phone for me is listening to podcasts and watching YouTube videos. And it doesn't need to be the most expensive gadget in my bag.

Yeah. I mean, this comes down to the content, consumption, creation, divide, right? Which is you kind of use your phone. I mean, I guess we're just talking to photos. But you use your phone to consume so many things and to create very little. And it seems like your energy that pro money goes towards,

this is the thing I used to make things and it should be the best and most flexible tool. But, I mean, we spent how many episodes of the show talking about tablets and iPads and laptops versus tablets and they're merging. And like, it's the problem that everyone's trying to solve. And I'm excited to see Apple's riff on what a super expensive iPhone looks like.

And I guarantee you they will sell as many of them as they can make, because that's just their way. Yeah. By the way, do you think it's going to be called the pro, the X, the addition? I think it's going to be called the 8. Yeah.

iPhone 8. Okay. Well, here's what's going to happen. This will be old news by the time you're hearing the sound of my voice, but you guys should know that Equifax was hacked and 143 million consumers may have had their data leaked, and the leaked data includes names, social security numbers, birthdays, addresses,

income instances, and driver's license numbers. Well, dang it. Wow. Everyone changed your identity. My name is now Steve. Yeah, Equifax is just pay for people to have like a life do-over now. You're starting over. You're a carpenter now.

Be who you want to be. Okay, here's what's going to happen. I'm going to read this ad. Then this week was the last episode of Spacecraft, Flor and Grush. I'm going to talk to her for about 15 minutes. And then we're going to come back and we're going to do all the iPhone stuff. You ready? This episode of Vergecast brought to us, brought to us.

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That's ZipRecruiter.com slash verge. One more time, try for free. Go to ZipRecruiter.com slash verge. Lauren. Nilai. My favorite astronaut. Oh, that's disappointing because I'm not one. Also, I don't know any others.

Yeah. So. But you're my favorite astronaut. It works out. That's great. I'm glad it worked out there. So I'm a little sad because you've been on the show for the past month. Yeah, and it's been fun.

It's been great. But spacecraft season one has come to an end, but with like a huge flourish at the end. I don't think we could have ended it any better. Yeah. What other experiences do you have left? I guess I should go home forever You should go to space The only thing to do now

But first of all congratulations on spacecraft season one Really exciting I think everyone loved it I loved it And you got to experience some zero G I did Yeah I went on a parabolic flight Which is nicknamed the Vomit Comet

And it's something I've always wanted to do Especially because my mom got to do it When she was working at NASA And it just was a absurd to me that she got to do this super cool thing and I didn't get to do it. Especially because if you knew my mother, she is not like a big roller coaster person. She isn't like intense things. So the idea that she actually went on this was insane to me. But she told me, if you've watched the video, she had like the worst time on it. So my goal was just to survive at least more parabolas than she did. So when your mom did it, presumably some time ago, it was actually part of NASA. Yeah, they were testing out some new technologies that needed to go to space. And I believe at the time, NASA owned its own parabolic plane.

They don't anymore. But yeah, they got to go on it. And if you look at the pictures of it, the inside of it looks like a sterilized, you know, hospital. That's like a padded room. Yeah, it's a padded room with this huge bulky technology in it. It's very retro looking for sure. But the flight you went on is not part of NASA.

It's like a private company. Yeah, it's the ZeroG Corporation, and they're one of just a handful of planes that do it nowadays. And they are pros. They're basically the main, if not the only company in the U.S. that's offering this. I think it might be the only company in the U.S. that offers this. Yeah, they do research, you know, flights.

They do, you know, tourist flights. I think that's like their bread and butter is these tourist flights. And yeah, it's, you know, a once-in-a-lifetime thing. And I always wanted to do it. And you guys let me do it. So I did. Wait, this is their business? Yeah, this is their business.

How big is this company? Not very big. I would say basically the bulk of the company was on the business. the flight with us. That was what was neat about it was I talked with a wonderful woman named Chelsea when we were setting this up and she was my liaison for the majority of this time and then she went on the flight with us. Wow. Yeah, it was her and like basically the entirety of the company was on the flight and they were your, she continued being our liaison when I was floating off into the ether. She grabbed my leg and pulled me back down and made sure I didn't, you know, bump and run into people.

So their pros, I mean, they've been, they fly all the time. Like, they're constantly going to different airports and doing this every couple weeks, you know. Is it just a bunch of friends in a plane? How do you? It's like, I want to know more about this company. But let's talk about space. Yes. So you presumably have not experienced weightlessness before.

I have not, no. I've been in pools. I'm assuming most people haven't. Yeah. What was it like? It was, I really, I say this on the video a lot. It's really hard to describe. and I know that's such a cop out, but it is.

I mean, you just, all of a sudden, you take a turn and the floor you are looking down at is now above you. And it's just, and you don't experience, obviously, any kind of, you know, your perspective changes, but your body doesn't feel like it's changing perspective at all, you know? So it really can get very disorienting, very quick. But yeah, it's just, it was just an insane feeling to just, oh, I'm sitting on the top of the plane now. And then I really, like, they want you to get down on the floor in between the parabolas so that you don't, you know, puke. Because you have to pull extra Gs between parabolas. And a lot of times they'd be like, you know, get down, get on the floor.

And I'd be like, I don't know where that is. Like, I'm really not sure. So to get your bearings once you're in zero-g, it's very tough to do. Yeah. I would like to also call out our heroic director, Miriam Nielsen, who had to shoot. You were just like goofing. Yes. You're just like flying around and she had to run a camera.

Yeah. Fortunately for her, I mean, they have a dedicated photographer on their flight too, so there's extra video and photos that he took as well. and he was giving her pointers beforehand. And they also have handrails and stuff that you can hold on to in case you want to stabilize yourself. So I think she utilized those a lot. But yeah, the best part was, like I was saying,

they tell you to get down on the floor for the extra Gs. But she was like standing up, kneeling. You know, she was getting footage of me being good while she was standing during the extra G portion. I was like, Jesus Christ, that is impressive. Yeah, heroism. Yes. So you got to do, first it was Martian than Mars.

Yes. Yeah. First they start you off easy. I'm sorry, lunar than Mars, right? Or the other way around. Mars first because it's one-third and then two lunar parabolas, which are one-sixth gravity. And then the rest are zero-g. And, yeah, those were, they got you kind of like acclimated.

It just felt very, you felt like you were on a cloud for a little bit. And then when you get to the zero-g, you're just like, what am I doing? I think the best part was when I lost control. There's a shot in the video where I just like bounce off the floor and then I like tumble to the back of the plane. And there's nothing I can do about it because I can grab on to somebody or I could, you know, grab on the wall. But I was too far away from the wall to do anything. So it was pretty funny to just watch me kind of fly away. I personally enjoyed the fact that you got super competitive with just yourself in insisting that you wanted to do a flip.

Yeah. And then the first time I tried to do it, I didn't even push off anything, so I didn't really do much. And then I think at the end they showed me trying to, like, eat those candies and I was really bad at it. And so they have another number of tricks that... Explain eat the candies. Oh, oh. So, like, one thing you can do is throw up candy and then try to, like, catch it in your mouth by yourself. But I was not good at that.

And I was actually pretty bad at all of the tricks that they tried to get us to do. They would do one where they want to do like a Superman shot where they have everybody line up at the back of the plane and then as soon as the parabola or as soon as you start to get weightless then you all push off and you're like with your arms outstretched and you look like Superman. Everybody did it and I just stayed on the floor.

Like I just did not do it well. It looked really bad. So now you've had this experience. By the way, did anybody vomit on the final comment? Oh, so many people did. How is that managed? That was the grossest part. So, well, they handle it very well.

Obviously, their pros at this. This happens all the time. But the best. Sorry, you get a nickname. Sorry, I hope they don't hate me for talking about this. But the best is that, I mean, obviously, the vomit goes everywhere. That's terrible. So when we got back to like a, we leveled off a couple of times, a little extra time.

Normally you do a couple levels in between the problems just to get. everybody, you know, giving them a break. But we leveled off a little bit more than we were supposed to just to help these sick people. But yeah, when we leveled off one time, I just saw, you know, one of the employees wiping off the wall and then wiping off the ceiling and then wiping off the floor. Like, the vomit made everywhere. Like, and then they would run to the back of the plane, get some splooshes down there.

Oh, wow. Was the vomit ever weightless with you? Oh, yeah. The best was when one time we leveled off and I just watched it come from the ceiling down to the floor. It was okay. Once in the lifetime experience. I felt so bad because it was this one family.

And, you know, if you think about it, that's your one experience to do it. I don't know if they give you like a discount to come back. Like, sorry you bombed on this trip. Oh, no. You have a half-off ticket for your next ride. You have to earn a nickname, like, the Vama Com. Yeah, exactly.

I was thinking about, I'm like, I love roller coasters and rides, but you know the ride where they just spin you around? Yes. And, like, you get pinned to the wall. Yeah. That one always wrecks me. Yeah. Well, that's essentially like a centrifuge.

Right. I mean, it basically is. So that kind of, that's the feeling, well, I mean, that probably wasn't as intense as what we were feeling. But we feel about 1.8 G's. Maybe it is. I don't know. But yeah, you feel about close to 2 Gs when you're, so you're doing these parabolas, right?

We explained in the video. And, yeah, it basically feels like this mattress or someone's like pressing down on your body. And that part actually was kind of fun for me. I liked it. But yeah, I think the going back and forth between that and the weightlessness definitely took its toll by the end of the flight. Did you come close? I didn't come close, but I remember just. sitting, I was standing there and I was like, okay, I can handle about two more of these,

and I think I'm, I might need to, like, sit down for one of them. And then they're like, all right, we're done. I was like, yeah, I'm okay with that. I was like, I wasn't upset. All right, so let's talk about, so the experience sounds amazing. Yeah. How much does it cost? Like, ready to people do it?

Yeah, it's usually about five grand. Yeah. And then you can pay extra if you want to fly with celebrities and stuff. There was a flight going up to fly with William Shatner in Vegas, seemed like a good time. All of this is... We should just profile this company. Anyway, so that is amazing.

So you had an amazing experience. But talk about the science of this. Like, what is there, is there something you can learn from it? Is there something NASA learned from it when they were doing it? Where they just testing equipment and now they have the ISS so they can just put the equipment there? Like, what is the sort of the science of understanding weightlessness? Yeah, so I think when it comes to astronauts, it's not necessarily.

I think in order to do it. You know, a fun fact was Scott Kelly was on our flight who did one year in space. Yeah. And so he was a good source to compare what it really felt like. And he was actually saying that the flight is worse because you are going back and forth for these two states of gravity.

And whereas in space, you're just, you go from extra Gs during launch and then you're in space. You know, it's not a constant transition. So I think it's good for astronauts, maybe if they want to understand what it feels like, just temporarily, just get a taste. So they'll understand, you know, you can't really maneuver in the same ways as you can on Earth to fix things. However, I think a real good opportunity for this is testing out these new technologies.

So I did a story a couple months ago about this new type of robot that they're developing to get rid of space trash. And the way it works is it uses, it's inspired by gecko feet, how they stick to walls. that uses the same kind of principles to stick to hardware. So you stick to the hardware and then you can drag it wherever you want and then you can potentially clean up space debris in orbit. But the only way to test it out before going to space is to see if it would actually work in a zero gravity environment. So they put it on one of these parabolic flights.

Sure enough, it worked just fine in zero-g. Wow. So it's really just a way to quickly test out things that just to see if they would operate in zero-g like the way that you want them to before actually sitting them to space. Yeah. Which is a way, five grand seems like a lot for you and me, but it's way less expensive than launching a rocket. So last week you were on the show. Yes. We talked a lot about how hard astronauts have to work out when they're weightless in order to just preserve their bodies, basically.

Now you've experienced weightlessness. Do you have any more reflection on the other experience of just how hard it is to be in that environment for a long period of time? Yeah. Well, I mean, even though you do get nauseous, I got nauseous on that flight, there's still nausea involved with going to space. It's not the same type, but it's space adaptation syndrome where basically your body is like, what the hell is going on right now? I don't know what the ceiling is. I don't know what the floor is. So your sense of balance is all turned off.

And so then you have, like, a sickness for the first couple days that you come to space. So on top of that, so you got all these physical challenges you got to do. You got all these, you know, you basically have to retrain your brain to operate and work in the space environment. And then you got nausea. You got all these other things that you have to deal with. And I've also heard that, you know, you deal with fluid shift when you're in space too. So your body's fluids move around. They sit in your face and sometimes can make you feel like you have a sinus infection going on.

You're not sick, though, but it just kind of feels like you're puffy. So there's all these different things. Like, it's just an insane new work scenario. I just, like, I don't know if I said this in the last podcast, but so many people, you know, they talk about being advocates for regular people going in space. I'm all about that. I'm not saying that regular people shouldn't go to space, but if you're going to live in the space environment

and you want to work in orbit or whatever, it takes a lot. It takes a lot of training, a lot of effort. And I think it does a disservice to the astronauts and all the engineers that work on this to say that just anybody can go to space, no problem, as if you don't have to do all this planning beforehand. Because there is so much,

that you don't even think about that's going to be thrusts upon you in this new type of environment. It's almost like an environment that can kill you at any minute. It's almost like it. And then you think about it too. I mean, a lot of the reason that astronauts are so healthy is because think of what could happen

if you have a medical emergency. We haven't had a medical emergency in a space, but I was talking to someone who studies, like, the body in space. And she was saying, you know, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. More people we put in the space,

a higher likelihood that somebody's going to have a medical episode. When that happens, we have some techniques like using ultrasound and stuff to help them out. But if you have to evacuate to Earth, that's not a quick process, you know? So you don't want somebody that's going to have,

you know, a medical episode unless you have a floating hospital up there. Yeah. And even then, it's hard to get all the things that you need up there in order to act, adequately treat somebody. So, moral misnoy. I'm not saying that...

It's got dark, Lauren. No, I just want to say that I have the most profound respect and appreciation for what it takes to go to space as an astronaut and what it takes for people to send them to space in the effort that entails as well.

So I want everyone to go to space, but you're going to have to work for it. Yeah. Yeah. So you've done these four episodes. You've had it a taste of weightlessness, you've done a bunch of astronaut training, you've worn the spacesuit, what's like the bigger takeaway besides, like, it's difficult, right? Is there something that you didn't understand when you went into it, that you understand

better now? I just, I love the fact that it seems, it is such a multifaceted job. You know, we talked to a couple astronauts when we're down at the Neutral Boiency Lab, and I was like, you know, what is this, like a typical ninder fiver? And he's like, no, it is different every single. day because think about it, there's so many different aspects that they have to work on every single day. One day it's spacewalk training. One day they got to work out. You know, one day they have to train for this lab experiment that they're doing. Like, every day is different. And that just seems,

that was really cool because that, it seems like the job just never gets old. And then at the end of it, your reward is going to space, you know? So, like, that's a, that's a pretty amazing job to have. Yeah. So spacecraft season two. Yeah. We'll do. I'll say, I greenlit next level season two. You should have seen Delai's like, we'll do it. We should do it.

I mean, Lauren Good when we were doing the next level podcast. She was like, are we going to do it? And I was like, sure. So that one's greenlit. We'll do it. This one's greenlit too. What are the next challenges if we do another season? Like what are the things you want to line up and do?

Well, I have an idea. Okay. So we talked about what it takes to get to space. what if we talked about what it takes to colonize another space. So now you have to go to space? Now I have to live. I see the game you're playing. Now I have to live on Mars.

You have to send me to Mars. Actually, I'd rather go to the moon first. If anyone knows me, I'll know that. But, yeah. You're really my friend. If you're really my friend. You'll understand that I'm a lunar. I'm a moon-stand first.

Yeah, but I also want to hear input from people. Yeah. Because that's my idea. But I feel like a lot of people have ideas of what we can illustrate, and I'd be happy to take on those challenges. Or where can they get a hold of you? They can get a hold of me on my Twitter account at Lauren Gresh, L-O-R-E-N, G-R-U-S-H. Awesome.

Well, it's been really fun having you on this show this month. Yeah. Spacecraft was super fun. It was fun. This is not a good metric, it's not a meaningful metric, but I think it's a fun one. Every one of your episodes, I go on YouTube, and you get like 4,000 likes, and there'd be, like, 90 people who are like, I don't like space. but like having a bunch of YouTubers

be really enthusiastic about something I thought was great I feel very empowered that the feedback was super positive and I appreciate that and it is like I said it's funny to see what people latch on to like in each episode

there's always something that people are like wait what the sweat goes everywhere there was a comment on the vomit comment episode where someone was like this is how they green screen it and as like, that is a, you are way beyond conspiracy now. Now you are just, you're just insane. That was actually a cool part of doing the flight was when we were done.

They gave us a bunch of chips. And then we talked about like when they use the plane for videos and stuff, you know, like they're pros when it comes to production. So they have a bunch of celebrities fly. They do a lot of shoots there. So it was interesting to hear their experience. Like they, obviously, since they're like, if not the only company in US that does this, you know, they, everybody goes to them when they want to simulate zero G. So you're saying that is how they green screen it.

Moon landing fake confirmed. No, I'm saying that they have used green screens in the plane. Oh, no. Oh, God. I ruined everything. No, I just like the fact the audience was so into it, the fact that the show came out so great and that you are all. obviously so passionate about space, I think all came together really well. Well, I'm happy to do it again.

And I will gladly put myself into crazy hijinks yet again for season two. We're definitely sending you to Mars. You know, the working title of the show is Lauren Goes to Space. Yes. We had to scrap it because we promised we just couldn't keep. Lauren actually never goes to space. We're going to get there. Do you remember we were out with Walt and we were talking?

He was like, how much does it cost to send you the international? space station. I was like, wow, it's like millions of dollars. He's like, let me look into this. It's a wallet. Well, it's a dreamer. That Mossburg, only the highest of ambitions for us. Anyway, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for having me. Spacecraft Season 2 sometime in the future. We'll do it. It's going to happen. It's going to be great. All right. Thanks, Lauren. Thank you. That Lauren Grush, I got to say, spacecraft, super fun. If you haven't watched it, go watch all four episodes now. And the one with her tumbling through zero G, very job.

jealous of her career choices. We're like out here talking about phones. She's like flying through space. She bet on the right horse. The space horse. Good old space horse. We should get a horse. We should go horse.

All right. Let's get into it next week. iPhone event. I mean like Apple's having an event. It's September. Yeah. One only assumes a new iPhone will be there. You'll never know though.

I think there's going to be three. Yeah. I'm feeling good about that. Three being a 7S, 7S plus in the 8 ProX. In special. Special. I found special. Yeah, I think that feels right.

It kind of tracks with all the rumors. The real question is going to be... There's no new SE? Right. So that is not, I think, the real question, but it is yet another question that one could ask. No, I think the real question is, you know, they usually keep around the old. one so the seven will get cheaper and then you'll get these

S models we think and then there's the 8 or the pro or whatever besides just like gluing a wireless charging pad on the back of the 7 and maybe giving a processor bump like what's gonna what's why would you buy that? The cameras are going to be turned sideways. Sideways cameras

upside down now it's skinny now it's fat it's an iPod. Is that the rumor that they're going to put a wireless charger on the 7S? That is a rumor. It is a, I don't know if it's a door room. They'd have to change the body as well to do that.

Who knows? They saved all that room from the headphone jack. No, it's the, I mean, that's the whole reason why the eight is supposed to have like a glass back. So I've seen, I've seen. There are leaks of the seven with a glass back. Yeah. So there's like rumors. But beyond that, functionality wise, I think the story of the eight pro X

I really wish we knew its name because it's very complicated. Let's call it the 8. Do you just want to call it at the 8? We're going to call it the 8? I think it's the 8. I really do. They're not going to call it the anniversary edition. Calling it the X is like, I don't know.

I never want to assume that Apple won't make a dad joke, you know, or like something that feels kind of corny. But it feels too corny to call it the iPhone X, you know? It just feels too lame. Now I'm 100% that they're going to call it the X. They can't. If there's a corny dad joke to make, Apple will make it. Here's something they could add to the 7S.

Yeah. Every time you unlock it with touch ID. Yeah. Like back in the olden days, you get a little push notification that reminds you like how little money you have in your bank account. Because you didn't buy the expensive one? Yeah, you're too poor for the good one. It's like it saves five cents. a day for you.

That's right. You can get there. You'll get it next time. They're going to buy one of those, like, clarity or whatever that, like, auto saves money for you. Yeah, I think, I'm very curious how they're going to tell this story. Right, because so much of it has been leaked. They obviously have flashy new hardware to show off.

We, again, presume. And then they've got these, like, middle children, right? So it's not, it's not the iPhone 7. On top of all that, the middle children are going to be the only ones you can buy right away, because the current rumors are that the flashy one won't be available for a month or two. And it's going to be an extremely limited supply. And so it's going to be hard to buy one even when it does become quote unquote available. So there's going to be a whole thing where, like, you can get the cheap one that's basically the same as the new one,

except that it doesn't have wireless charging and, you know, the slightly faster processor. Or you can wait for the new one and who knows when you're going to be able to buy it. Or, you know, we got these. They're fine. I got these. I feel like the normal Apple way of doing this would be. Just focus on the 8 the whole time. And then when they get to the price chart, like, oh, and there's a 7S and we bump the processor and it's got a better camera and stuff.

Yeah. It's fine. But if you're on... But they can't do that. If you're on AT&T next, right, which is the terrible scam phone upgrade system that I'm on. The 7S is the one that you're almost certainly just going to get. Right? They're not going to give you the more expensive one.

So, like, many more people are just going to get these S models. And the story of why this is another phone worth having beyond you have like a sucker paid installments to 18T for the past two months, 24 months, they need a better story than that. So like it's got a faster processor. We change the design and added wireless chart. I'm very curious. They're Apple. They are masters at delivering these messages. I am sure they will have a good, clean, somewhat persuasive message for the S to exist.

I'm just super curious what it is because off the... I am not a master marketer. And off the top of my head, I couldn't tell you what it is. But then there's all this other stuff that's what I'm doing on. Did you see the OLED news today?

So the Wall Street Journal is like Apple desperately needs to find a supplier of OLED screens for these phones because they're dependent on Samsung. And they invested a bunch of money into LG's OLED production. But then there was an ars technic piece comparing the V-30 to like the Samsung O-ed

and the V-30 screen is terrible. Yeah, how did Samsung? Well, that's because, well, see, Google also invested a bunch of money in LG. Maybe the V-30 screen is terrible because they're saving all the good screens for Apple and for the Pixel. Maybe. You know, what I really don't understand, I would love for somebody to explain this to me, LG makes the best TVs where OLED TVs. I have one. It's great. Walt has one. He loves it.

Great TVs. Like, easily the best TVs you can buy are LG-O-L-L-L-D TVs. Same panels in Sony's TVs. Sony's TVs, hilariously more expensive, but whatever. OLED panels, great. LG, the clear, obvious winner. Samsung TVs are all LCDs, also the top of the market. But when you get to phones, it's the other way around.

LG made all the best LCD displays for phones, including the one in the iPhone forever. Samsung bet on OLED and makes all the best OLED screens. And I just want, is it like two brothers and they fought? And they like went their different ways. Like, I don't... Like John, Oled and Jim Oled. Yeah. Like, how are you really good at the big ones and not the little ones?

I'm sure you're really good at the little ones and not the big ones. The pixel density, there's gotta be a way different process. But one of the original promises with OLED was that it was going to be easier to manufacture. Yeah, but if you are Samsung and you are really good... It does not seem to be that easy. It making like 4K OLED displays at five inches. Yeah. Why can't you just relax the pixel density?

and make a good OLED. Just get like a stretching machine. Just like chill out for a minute and try to make a good TV. It's just like a mystery, but it's amazing that we've arrived at this place where there's two primary display manufacturers with completely mirror image skill sets. And Apple is now having to be deeply in bed with Samsung again after it was already deeply in bed with Samsung on processor manufacturing. like I don't think that's where Apple wants to be at all. No. And then on top of it, they're, you know, they have to price the phone higher so they can

constrain supply against all this stuff. This is one of those stories. I think we talked about Apple and Qualcomm. And if like that lawsuit goes sideways, like the whole industry changes, this Apple's Samsung relationship around displays. They can't screw up its display partnerships. Like you can screw up your patent process. processor patent partnerships.

Great. Like, maybe that's nuclear for the entire industry. No, no, they can make a screenless iPhone. It's just a big Siri button. But if the iPhone doesn't have the best display in the industry, like Apple's seeded a lot of ground.

Like, fundamentally to me, the iPhone retina display is still the cleanest screen in the industry. It has the best color reproduction. I still think OLED screen's like way over saturated. I know everybody disagrees with me. But if they make the, this move and then they're not as good as Samsung because Samsung is withholding its best parts for

itself. That's like a big moment for Apple. I think that's something for them to overcome and like probably I have to explain a little bit as they get into what we didn't sell as much of the expense. Like, you know, they're going to have a investor call in three months where they're going to have to talk about component supply because that's what they always talk about on those calls. And having literally the primary element of the phone in the hands of their best competitor, I think, is just really fascinating to me. And I think this is why the essential phones is an LCD.

Apple just needs to make, they need to pull a Samsung and they need to start making displays. They need to start making boats. They need to start making washing machines. And build them all in the United States. Yeah, they got the deal to put the Foxcon plant in Wisconsin. Only

it's sharp LCD TVs. Yeah. Yeah. They were so close. Just a million miles away from what they need. Yeah. I don't know. I just thing it's ultimately fascinating that Apple's thing is we need to own or control our primary technologies. It's like a Steve Jobs line that they use a lot. And now they're in this position where the primary technology of their phone is they're in a fight to get more of it. And

their other supplier that they could use to leverage against Samsung is not, it doesn't appear to be ready for the task. So as far as I could, as far as I could tell almost all the OLED patents are owned by UDC Universal Display Corporation, and it licenses them to Samsung and LG. So there's like no, I don't know what the big barrier to entry to jumping into this other than it seems to be hard to make good OLEDs. But LG is cranking out 65 inch OLEDs on the daily. Right. To make those smaller. Just because somebody does it well doesn't mean it's easy to do it well, is what I'm saying.

Hmm. You know? Yeah. It's just, I don't understand. It's just so confusing to me. Like, they are well known for making a product that no one else was actually able to make. Right. LG got to OLED first in TVs.

They made them great. Sony gave up on OLED. They came back to OLED. They bought the panels from LD. I get, it's probably a much lower volume product. But it's just the fact that they can't take all of that expertise and move it to the higher volume product suggests that there's something much harder than we're really talking about, and that Samsung has just never even tried.

Who knows? We can talk about OLEDs all night. That's right. We definitely can. Other stuff going on with the phone, I think we're probably going to hear a lot about Siri at this event. It's obviously an area of huge focus for Apple. Our friend David Pierce, notable Verge trader, just had an article in Wired about the work they've done to make Siri sound more human and wired.

Just go read it. It's good. So there's obviously, like, they're priming the pump with Siri news. Like, the voice is better. They just, they have a machine learning blog now. Do you see this piece? Apple has a machine learning blog. Because they couldn't hire people because they wouldn't let them publish. So they started to block for them.

This is a true story. So the reason they hire a bunch of researchers. The first white paper they published was, like, how they're using machine learning to make the voice sound better. And they're using this cool hybrid approach. and it sounds way better. So I'm expecting we'll see some of that. I'm expecting they're going to take a bunch of shots

at Alexa and Google Assistant around how complicated they are versus, you know, Siri, if you live a completely Apple life, can just do all the things. I think we'll probably see some HomePod. Well, I can do all the Apple things. Right, that's what I mean.

If you live a completely Apple ecosystem life, Siri is like, yes, buy, Siri, buy the most expensive phone. It's like, it's going to do it for you. I think we'll probably see, about the HomePod, I don't think it's ready yet. But I think that combination of Siri, just being in all the products, seems really interesting to me.

And then there's a lot of noise around LTE Apple Watch, which... Yeah, that will happen. Yeah? You're going to change the shape. And it'll be fine. The only evidence we have that they're going to change the shape is John Gruber made an aside

that a little birdie that was completely unconfirmed suggested that there was going to be a new form factor. LTE is a, you know, it's a radio, it's big. Presumably this will have an embedded sim of some kind, so there won't need to be space for a microsim on it, though I'm sure they will want it to have figured that out. They should make it, I don't know, maybe a little bit bigger in order to accommodate it, but maybe they only want LTE to be like, you know, a sometimes thing, like cookies for cookie monster. And so they'll just leave it the same and trust people to figure out that the battery life will get wrecked if you leave it on all the time. Yeah. So yeah, I don't know. But the thing I'm more curious about

is like how many people are actually clamoring for an LTE Apple Watch? How many people are really like, yeah, no, I've, I see the potential on this thing on my wrist that I can leave my phone at home and never, never have to take it out. It's only there for like going to run. Yeah. That's the only reason I think you'd want LTE on it. Well, that's what, I mean, they're leaning into fitness with a thing. Yeah. So the combination of battery life and fitness use cases are in conflict with each other. Yeah.

To me, the real genuine question with an LTE-en-a-led Apple Watch is how much do you pay to have it get access to the network? Because every single carrier has got a little add-on plan for a little extra devices like it, and they all cost, I don't know, $10 a month, maybe. maybe 15. I have a hard time believing that I would want to pay. Sometimes it's more. It used to be more.

The only carrier that doesn't charge for extra SIM cards is Project 5. Who knows how long Google is going to keep that thing running. But, you know, every carrier has to make sure that, like, it uses your same phone number. And all of that stuff, how much extra it costs, making sure it uses the same phone number as your actual phone, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, means getting in tighter with carriers and their relatively crappy policies and services in a way that Apple has traditionally not had to. And I'm very curious to see if they've managed to, I don't know, ring any concessions out of any carriers.

You know, is it going to be carrier specific? They didn't want to put all the radios in it. So there's an AT&T version or Verizon version and a, you know, T-Mobile version. Or, you know, is it going to be? be a universal, you know, giant radio in which case, or, you know, set of radios, in which case maybe they do need to make a little bit bigger. Lots of questions. Well, if they do LTE, if it's just LTE straight and they don't try and put a 3G radio in it, that might change it a little bit. We'll see. I don't know. I'm, again, I think they did a really good job last time when they

like rebooted the entire watch interface of being like, here's what it does now. We're focused. It's a real product. Just adding LTE onto it, they need to kind of explain the value of another way. I think the reason I'm so excited about this event is Apple has so much explaining to do, and they're like, good at it. You know what I mean? Like, they have a lot of, here's the value of this. And like, I, I suspect they're more confident about what the value is than I've seen them. Like when they, the first, the event that I keep thinking of is the first Apple Watch event when it was like chaos, right? Like Bono was there. And they're like, I don't know.

Like, now we're running in Africa because that's what the Apple Watch is for. And it was just like all over the place. And Apple lately has just been very focused about, here's why you spend the money on our product. So I think I'm just excited to like hear all those pitches. And then, you know, obviously we'll do what we do and see if they live up to the claims. But I think that's just an exciting moment. And then lastly, poor sweet Apple TV.

So when you're the biggest company on the planet and you're getting wrecked by an Amazon stick and Roku. Yeah. Maybe you're not doing it right. Yeah. I mean, Roku just, this is the whole next segment, so I'm not going to jump it too much. But if the Apple TV, if the main thing it does, is light up two more lights on my receiver when I plug it in. Okay, you were talking about this.

Please explain your receiver. I will be very happy. What did the lights mean on your receiver? So 4K HDR. That's been leaked in the firmware. It's a given. There is not yet a device. We've talked about this.

Let's say you plug in a 1080p Apple TV into your receiver. Or let's say a 720P Apple TV. Do you get one light and then there's two lights for 180p and then three lights for 4K and then there's like the TV will be like Dolby vision and it's real bright. That's a light. Okay. Conceptually it's a light.

My receiver is like 4K pass through. Are these not literal lights? No, on my receiver when it detects a 4K signal it like gives you a little light. There it is. It's like, you did it. And then the TV, like, puts up the banner that says Dolby Vision. Because it's switched picture modes. It's all very exciting.

One light from each spot. Yeah. Adds up. Super. No, no, that's just... That's one conceptual light. Oh, okay. Two physical lights, one conceptual light.

Okay. You with me on that? Okay. No, but let's keep going. One feature, two lights. Yeah. One conceptual light. Every time I say that, Paul, just...

melts into disaster. All right, so that's one light. Okay. Just run with me on that, dude. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. All right. The other light is the Atmos light, which is the surround sound. Oh, right.

So, like, when Dolby Digital hits my receiver, it lights up Dolby Digital. Great. And you can light up Dolby Digital Plus. You can light up DTS NeuroX, like all kinds of lights. That's like a cornucopia of lights. The one light, the two lights you cannot get together are Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, which is very funny because they're both made by Dolby. But virtually, I think literally the only way to do it now is to go out and buy a new LG TV.

So I've been in, I don't want to do that. So I haven't. It's great. I don't bolt it to the wall. Yeah, it's too small, though. Well, you can't get a bigger one. So I'm just waiting. LG has some OLED business to finish here.

Then you need to make the small ones good And you need to make the bigger ones bigger Get on it, LG And build it in the US of A Anyway My big takeaway here is by LG TV They're great Anyway

Two lights Two lights They're really conceptual lights Is all Apple does Is sell a new Apple TV That when I plug it into my receiver It's exactly the same But it has 4K HDR

Dolby Vision or HR 10 Whatever And it supports Atmos Right That means And some quantity of content is purchasable. That's out there. But all it's really doing is like lighting up two more lights because it supports two more higher quality standards.

I don't think that's anywhere near enough to compete with the fact that Roku is kicking their ass in the $29 market. Because there's not actually a lot of people who give a shit about the lights like I do. I really care about the lights. The literal and figurative lights. The literal and emotional lights of watching television in my home are very complicated. Yeah, but if that's it, like, I don't think they can reboot the interface in a serious way because they've had app developers making apps, like, buying into the TVOS, so you can't just throw out all that work. Now you're committed to having a swipey remote and buttons and voice.

You've got apps built around it, so you can't throw out, like, the... input system. You can maybe replace the home screen with that TV app they put out, but Netflix and other things don't plug into it. I think they're really limited what they can do in that space. And I don't think people actually want little iOS computers plugged into their TV. I think they just want a $40 Roku stick. It's tough.

Real tough. It's still a hobby. It's still a hobby. It's still a hobby. But like if Apple is the product for high-end AV nerds, it's not nice-end AV-Nerds, it's not never what Apple has been. I see no reason for them to do this right now. It seems like the one twist that they could do is this is their game console moment.

That's so hard. Yeah. There would be so many things to be doing right now. So many. And also they have two really great competitors. Like you'd have to walk in and get all of Sony's exclusives. There's three. There's Nintendo's still around two.

Yeah, that's true. Good old Nintendo. But I meant for the... Don't say anything bad about Nintendo. Mario plus Rabbids is awesome. It's so hard to believe. I just have no patience for those tactics games. Yeah.

I just don't think, is this? This one's a blast. Yeah, you're right. They have three great competitors. I just meant the PS4 and the Xbox, they turn the Apple TV into a game console. Those are the most direct competitors because Switches also take it with you.

And they have a phone for that. I know. Poor sweet Apple TV. I'm so excited about that part of their presentation when they're like, it still costs $200. And I'm like, Eddie Q points at me and he's like, you got your lights. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You should just send them a photo of your receiver and then like Photoshop it with the lights on that you would wish to be on. Can I tell you a story?

So they could just like present that to you. When the last Apple TV came out and I was doing the review, they're like, we don't have power button on here and we don't do IR because everything's going to run over HTML CEC. I took home, plug it in my stuff. It's like, this is all a little bit broken. CEC's, I've, you know, got, like, Panasonic TV, Pioneer receiver, there's all kinds of stuff in the chain. I'm like, it's not working quite right. And I'm like, what receiver do you have?

And I took a picture of it, and they literally screenshoted, they found the manual, they screenshot of the PDF and the manual and told me what settings to fix to make it easier. It was very nice of them. But I was like, this is why TV is a huge mess. Okay, I'm going to read this ad. Then we should actually, there's, A surprising amount of TV news to talk about here.

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just send it back with no questions to ask. That's parachute home.com slash verge for free shipping and return. Hour and a half lunch breaks. I don't get that. Well, you could. We should start a sheet factory. All right.

Paul. Every week, my friend, you do a segment at this time with one consistent name. Yeah, but I forgot. Is that what it's called this week? Oh, I remember what I just forgot. I didn't come up with a name for it. It's called Untitled. All right.

I'm letting this one slide. It's the Harry Potter clock. Somebody made the Harry Potter clock, which I think is like, it happens like every six months. Yeah. Somebody makes the Harry Potter clock. clock. But somebody did it again, and I'm really happy. It's like, there's a clock that tracks locations.

Like, of different family. Okay, so in Harry Potter, the Weasleys have a clock, and the different hands on the clock say where the different members of the family are right now, like at work or like in mortal peril or something like that. Like near the end, spoilers, but all the hands are near mortal, mortal peril for all the Weasleys. Oh, no. It's very scary.

This clock is a real situation. Paul. Somebody made it. It sucks. When I'm trying to stall, I can't Google very well. See, Paul, what I was expecting you just to do is like, the episode, the segment is called, called Pod Pod, or maybe Bud Buddy about this insane phone case that the inventor of the pebble is making.

That's pretty good. You said it's pretty good. Wait, before we do that, I just want everyone to take note of the fact that Paul's attempt at stalling was recounting. was recounting the plot of Harry Potter. Okay, now we can talk about the Bud Buddy. I can't find this part. So Harry's a boy.

I might have just imagined this clock. Do you think that's possible? Did you just read Harry Potter last? Wait, are you serious? This doesn't exist? I know it exists. You just don't even worry about it. Deeter, just tell everybody about the Bud Buddy real quick.

Paul's in Mortal Herald. I know where his hands are pointing. Oh, my God. It's the ETA clock. All right. So that Eric... The pod case is about Eric Pichikovsky, who invented the Pebble Smartwatch, and now he's over... And my combinator, he's got a new company.

He's just going to make little random things. He's not going to try and, you know, take over the world of smart watches again. And it's an iPhone case that has a battery in it. But then it has slots in the top to stick AirPods in, so that your AirPods are always attached to a case that's attached to your phone. And it also charges... Here's what I don't understand. Both the phone and the AirPods. I thought the AirPods charging case was like an integral part of the whole Bluetooth system there.

Right? So if you want to reset the AirPods, you push the button on the back of the case, you compare them to other things. You take them in and out. It lights, you open the lid, your phone knows to connect. It's not like a relay station. It does a bunch of stuff, but if they're paired to your phone, you don't need it around. Huh. I always thought that, yeah, I always thought that, like, it, so they're off when they're out of your ears and you put them in your ears.

they just light up and start working? Yeah. Because the way I use AirPods is I flip open the case and they connect. So when they're in the case, how do they know to connect to your ears? Just because you put them in? Yeah, because you put them in. And that lights up the IR thing and they turn on and they're connected. You could also open up control center, swipe over to the music pane, which makes perfect sense,

and then tap the Bluetooth thing and then switch the Bluetooth icon. Okay. I mean, if this case didn't look completely insane, I'd be into it. It just looks so ridiculous. It's not. The AirPods are not like, what's the opposite of ungainly? They're not gainly. They're ungainly, is what I'm trying to say.

They're ungainly. And trying to craft a case, like custom fit around their extremely weird shape. Yeah. Leads you to a real mistake. All right, Paul. It was a good segment, man. It's the ETA clock. Yeah, rescued over here.

Thank you, Deeter. That segment this week was called Deeter saves the day. The Deeter saves the day. All right. We're going to, we have to talk. about this stuff because it's all crazy. We got to do it fast. We're way over time here.

But I'm just going to read this list of headlines. And then you guess what theme I'm trying to convey. You, Paul, and also you, the listener. I'm pointing it, Paul, but I figuratively meet the listener. Functional lights. Yeah.

Okay, here's a list of headlines. Spotify and Hulu just launched an amazing $5 bundle for college students. T-Mobile partners with Netflix for free Netflix. Apple and Amazon are reportedly in the running for James Bond movie rights. Marvel and Star Wars movies will be exclusive to Disney's upcoming streaming service. Roku files for $100 million IPO. Roku begins programming content with the launch of an ad-supported movie channel.

Apple's Eddie Q is no longer in charge of Siri, just focused on services. For that last one, it's a little bit of a curveball. I think it pairs with the Apple. on Amazon. Q's job is just the media stuff now. That's a lot. I think the key thing is like dealing with media stuff and what stuff gets to go where

and who partners with what network and whatever is clearly a full-time job. Yeah. And they just hired a bunch of network executives from Sony. And I think that's probably why the James Bond thing is happening because Sony's had the James Bond rights for so long. That probably the Sony guys who now work at

Apple are like, what if we just have that thing that we always had? And Apple has the Amazon has the money too. But that is a whole bunch of big tech company media partnership news all in one in a couple of days. Most of the stuff happened today. The move for these companies to start also being content distributors to me is tied heavily. Oh, you know what we didn't put here? Is the T-Mobile when they did the Netflix on us thing? John Ledger made a video where he just trashed 18. AT&T in Verizon. That's the T-Mobile one sounds, the T-Mobile one sticks out to me because it seems very contra AT&T in Verizon. Or T-Mobile's like, I mean, I don't trust T-Mobile to actually be a good company, although my cell phone reception has finally recovered this week after like a month of being horrible.

But yeah, like we don't need to have our own. I am a little tired of everybody starting a new platform for media that will. also create original shows. Right. So this is, we have talked about net neutrality a thousand times in the Vergecast ever since the Verge, before the Vergecast existed. Sure. All of this stuff is

we're going to own the pipes and then you're going to consume our content on those pipes, which is preferred to everybody else's content. Netflix and T-Mobile, everybody should go watch the John Ledger video. It's like friendship. It's not his vibe in that video is not

friendship. His vibe on that video is everybody stopped doing this garbage. Stop bundling. I think he actually says, stop bundling the thing people don't want with the thing they want, which is unlimited data. So he's like, we're just going to give you Netflix because that's what you want. And then he's like, how much of a fucking joke is that Go 90? Go 90's garbage. Like, he's actually like saying it. And then he's like, and they keep buying these like faded internet brands like, AWOL and Yahoo.

What losers? Verizon. I love having you around. And it's like John Lodger's just telling the truth. I love it. I thought it was great. It's like the funniest ledger performance ever. We'll say the thing that hurt,

because the T-Mobile deal is for people with two or more lines. Family plans. You know, who doesn't have two or more lines? Do you not have a family, Paul? I mean, this is at the moment. The awesome family on the first chance. Although I will say, I don't hardly watch Netflix anymore. The primary reason I keep it around is because my parents use my Netflix account

in a reverse millennial situation. You do have a family. Get them on T-Mobile. And they are on. did they switch off Team mobile? Yeah, yeah. Dang it.

Well, here's a mystery that you should not solve on the radio. I guess I'll have to call my parents. No, so here's this huge list of news. I think the Spotify Hulu combo for $5 for college students is so smart.

Like, everyone's just going to buy that. Spotify is going to keep building its dominant position. The Netflix thing we just talked about, I think, is great. I mean, T-Mobile subscribers are just going to do it. They're just going to watch Netflix. in a way that I don't think Verizon subscribers are just going to start watching Go-90

because it's free. By the way, we have to disclose this. I'm just going to say it. Very proud of the company. Our friends at SB Nation are putting a show on Go-90 about true crime in sports. Big exclusive in variety. So there's your disclosure. That said, no one's going to watch Go-90

except for this SB Nation show, which you should download the app and watch it. They're our friends. So here's my question. Wait, I just want to say this last thing. Do we feel comfortable? All right. And then this Apple James Bond News I feel like Apple's taste in culture products is just stuck in like 1992. It's really bad. They're like, here's a free U-2 record.

We bought a James Bond movie. Like, it's all of the taste of people who that stuff was really cool for them. Right. But they're not. Yeah. They're not really with it. Like, they got to get, I mean, like, I, man, I try to watch carpal karaoke. Why can't Apple give up?

real fast. Huh? I want Apple to give up really bad. They're not going on this content thing. Just look at this trend. I know. Like this is too much of a trend for a company of Apple's size and ambition

to ignore. But, like, do they just want to be the vessel for everyone else's insane content strategy, or do they want to be a player? I will say, I've been using YouTube Red, and for a while, and the YouTube app updated recently,

and there's like a banner up top. and it's like I'm on Netflix. It's a banner. So in a kind of a different format than just a regular video, there's a banner that's advertising their YouTube Red shows. Which is like, I don't even get,

like, I already pay you for this thing. I never got it for your original content. Yeah, I just don't want to watch ads. Yeah, I just don't want to watch ads. I wish you understood that. I don't know, man. So are we, we're basically unhappy with this, right? I think it's fun.

fundamentally, I don't like the idea that I'm, if I'm going to pick a wireless carrier, if I'm going to pick a cable company, I'm going to pick the one that's fastest and most reliable. And I don't want to pick one because it's the one that, you know, happens to have a corporate synergy with HBO or happens to have, you know, go 90 on it or whatever. Here's a disclosure for you, Comcast, something or other investor in Vox Media, our parent company. How much of this do I get to blame on the Comcast NBCU thing from back when, you know, back of the day? And they let them, you know, merge. And that's like the moment when

the pipe and the content became the same company. Yeah. And everyone's like, well, they got away with it. We can do whatever we want. You know, all the analysis of that deal that I've ever read suggests, and again, as Dieter said, disclosure of their investment in the company. Good to see a Comcast. But all the analysis of that deal I've read is that it's mostly successful because they don't actually do anything. NBC runs itself and they're successful and they've got theme parks and the minions and NBC stuff and Comcast is a cable

company and the actual amount of crossover between the streams is like very low. And I think when you look at what AT&T wants to do with direct TV and HBO and they're like we're going to cut down Game of Thrones to be better on phones. Like there's a higher level of ambition than what Comcast has been doing with NBC. That's not to say that 18T's idea isn't right, and then suddenly we're going to get all kinds of crazy Comcast stuff happening with NBC. But I think another reality of it, which is interesting, is that Comcast is a cable company,

and they basically give you TV and internet to your home, and they don't have a wireless business of any note. So for them to own NBC and then be like, we make TV, we sell a TV. TV network, like NBC's on it now. We sell fast internet to your house. And you can go to MSNBC.com. Like, the, they've done a lot of weird stuff. Like, our internet service running on an Xbox is outside of your data cap.

They do all of that stuff. But I think the stakes of that versus everything will be wireless or mobile broadband, and we're going to do all kinds of crazy stuff around that, those stakes feel very different to me. And the kind of the level of ambition around. Verizon wanting to have Go 90 preloaded on phones and like doing push alerts for Go 90 shows that are free off your data cap. The data caps are smaller, so getting free stuff on top of it is more meaningful. All that seems way more dangerous to me.

I think that what is bugging me here is not like a big, like moral or ethical or legal issue with monopolies or anything. It just seems so uninspired. It's like, you know, like the rush to VR. the rush to, you know, like a bunch of tech companies that didn't clearly know what to do next. And then they saw Netflix doing something and HBO succeeding with On Demand. And they're like, oh, let's get into original content. And, you know, it's just something to do because they didn't have a good idea. I mean, I see how it is a strategic, important thing to own a segment of the market in.

But it's just annoying to me. Well, it's just another version of lock-in. right like if you're apple and everyone loves youtube and then google's like here's the youtube phone and if you buy this phone like we'll partner with verizon and excuse youtube from the data cap like a lot of youtubeers will buy that phone it's like apple needs to be in the game and like create leverage against it i know i think it's i just read all the headlines because it's a trend like each individual piece of news is like whatever like roku's ipoing like not huge news on its own but as a trend, the amount of tech and media partnerships

that are happening right now, easily the most interesting thing that's happening in the tech industry, at least to me, but I just like lights on my receiver. That's my favorite thing. All right, I think that's our show. We're way over time. I will say this. Next week, we're doing this show live in San Francisco.

You should come to it, hang out with us, we'll tell some jokes, we'll talk about all of the Apple news, tons and tons of stuff to talk about. Who knows who'll show up? It's going to be amazing. Anyway, Lauren Good, host Too Embarrass to Ask. Dieter was on this week. listen to that. Caras Fisher hosts Recode, Decode, which is wonderful. Peter Cofco host Recode Media.

Great for Media nerds. We have a new podcast coming. So not yet. Why did you push that button? Very excited. We'll listen to the pilot today. A plus. Super excited about that. That's coming soon. You can also listen to other shows in the Vox Media Podcast Network, of which I will again confidently assert that we hear the flagship. Not a frigate. There's schooner. I took down a schooner in Assassin's Creed last. I don't know why I started playing this game. It was just like there. Anyhow, go listen to Azar Kline show.

Go listen to The Weeds. Go listen to Eater Upsil. All those are great. Lots of podcasts out in this world. And you can talk to us, Dieter's at Backlon. Paul's at Future Paul. I'm at Reckless.

Love your feedback. Go to iTunes, rate review, all those good things. We'll see you next week. Rock and roll. Paul. Richess Live. Run with it.