The Vergecast - Apple TV, universal remotes, and the joy of dropping phones

Episode Date: October 30, 2015

It was a good week to arguing about the state of television, with both Apple and Roku releasing new content delivery boxes. A trio of original Verge editors — Nilay Patel, Chris Ziegler, and Ross Miller — are joined by Helen Havlak in the Hype seat. In between heated debates about universal remotes and IR blasters, our Fab Four find time to talk about HTC's One A9 and — quite literally — toss around the new "drop-proof" Droid Turbo 2. Don't worry, you'll hear it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Vergecast. We're recording this, as you may have noticed, on Thursday, October 29. Wherever you are, it's whatever day it is. So that's great for you. That's always true. Yeah. I mean, infallible logic.

Is it? I'm Mila Patel. I'm joined today by a crew of, I think, Verge All-Stars, some Verge OGs. I got Chris Sigler. Yo. Be always excited. Chris Ziggler. I got Ross Miller.

Yo. And then I got Helen Havack in the Hype Seat. Hey. What's up? Not too much, Neely. I feel like I stole your entire team last week for the Hype Seat. So I had to bring you back in. But Helen's here.

That's exciting. It was kind of a huge week. Surprisingly so. I don't know if we expected this much, like, these random news bits kind of happen. Oh, and if you're wondering where Deeter is, he's off, he's starting his own news site, where he's just going to review old Palm Pilots. And the priv. Yeah.

And the Blackberry Priv. No, no, no, Dieter took a little break. He's on vacation at Amsterdam. Yeah, he's gone Dutch. Okay. He and he and Lisa are just paying for everything separately. They're like, that's the only thing they know about Amsterdam. But yeah, so Deeter's on vacation.

You'll be back next week. I will say, just me personally, my life is chaotic hellscape when Deeter's not around. I have no idea what's going on. There's no one to help me. Deeter, there's definitely a calming force in the office. and without him, you're right, everything goes down. Dieter's probably going to listen to this, so I'm not going to docks him too hard.

That is true, but then sometimes when Deider needs to let it all out, he just calls me, he just yells me for like five minutes. Well, that's where that side of him is. Well, that's the whiskey. And he's like, I'm done, moving on. I'm like, good, talk, buddy. I haven't heard Angry Deeter once in my life

and it was about open source. Ask Deeter about web standards. It's great. It's the best. Anyway, so we're here. Huge week on the site. We muddled through it without our friend Dieter. But just a ton of news.

We should start, I think, with the Apple TV, which I reviewed yesterday, or I put it through yesterday, Walt reviewed. We also had the Rofu4 review from Lauren earlier this week. And then a couple weeks that we did Fire TV 2. Right. So it's that moment in media streaming, I think. I think I've come to the decision that the tech industry, like, they pick one. type of entertainment to disrupt and like go all in for a minute and they're like uh and then they try

another so like they didn't first it was music in like the early 2000s and they're like all right and then it's like well we screwed with you enough now we're gonna try tv for a while and they're like all right we screwed with you again how about streaming music and they did that for a while and then those cycles are accelerating so like I think earlier this year it was all about music like all we talked about was Apple music streaming music Spotify and that's like calm down a little bit right title had a concert title had a concert then Spotify did its

Discover Weekly thing and now nothing else matters yeah I mean everybody I know who uses Spotify thinks that thank you everybody I know who uses Discover or Spotify

thinks that Discover Weekly is like the single most disruptive thing that has ever happened or music period it's just the best thing ever really yes like people wait for like people look forward to Monday now because they

do they for it I don't know about that now they look has Monday been more exciting? I look forward to Monday just because Monday is the conclusion of my deep, dark Sunday blues. Oh, what do you talk about? The Packers are what, 7 and 0? 6 and 0.

Soon to be 7 and 0. No, that's fine. There's nothing to be sad about it for Sunday. No one else has like a Sunday come down? Becky and I talk about this like every Sunday. I'm like, what's wrong? She's like, I don't know. Tomorrow's coming.

Like it's like that level of darkness. Yeah, there is. So you're saying Discover Weekly is like. It sort of like reboots your week in a really happy way. What's your favorite Discover Weekly thing that you have discovered weekly? Well, so I don't use Discover Weekly. Oh. I'm the only person still using Apple Music.

Yeah. And I will until the day they shut it down. So here's a story about how pedantic and crazy Twitter is. They released those numbers. They were like, 675 million people are still using Apple Music. And I was like, that A seems relatively low considering Apple's install base. or marketing power of stuff. So, like, tweeted,

and I don't think anybody I know is still using it. You know, like, how many people are using Apple Music? And, like, no fewer than, like, 50 random Twitter people were, like, 6.5 million of us, bro. Whoa. That is a really boring army. Apple Music for me? I mean, I could just be like,

why don't you try to share a song with me and then completely defeat your army as you all fumble through 3.0. Hashtake Team Zane. Yeah, yeah. We got Hot Long Bling first, though. You did. Yeah.

Anyway, so yeah, so there's like the music moment, and I think now we're just in a TV moment. Yeah, but the funny thing, we are, but every single new product that you mentioned that has hit the market in the past few weeks is so iterative, right? Right. Just like disgustingly iterative. Apple would have you believe otherwise, right? I mean, maybe later on the line, but yeah, what we got to the new Apple TV right now is not a lot of apps and stuff. Like, it is just the sequel. Everything is a plus one on the number.

Well, no, that's not 100% true. Okay, let's talk about it. It's true in the terms of, like, what it is right now. But the big move they made was the first Apple TV ran a weird version of OS10. And then the black ones have always run a weird version of iOS. But they're not actually iOS. There's no app store. There's none of this.

So they actually, the plus one, if you want to call it that, is they made it a real OS. They can support apps and the sandboxes. and like, so that is a big change. Now, that change has no effect on using the thing. Right. Except for Siri is there. But Siri is, like, way cut down. It would have been better if Siri was just full-on Siri,

and you could do Siri stuff with it. Do we know why it's not? Like, why they took out, like, the humor or, like, the Apple Music stuff? I don't know. It's kind of like they just assume you're going to have your phone with you. And I think they just want the product to be focused. But it's just funny because it's not Siri. And the idea that it doesn't connect back to your phone

or doesn't connect to your iPad or wherever you're a series. It's a little bit strange. And there's none of that. Like, it doesn't really know about your phone. It's weird that's running iOS, and it's like connected to all these Apple services. But apart from being able to airplay your phone to it, it doesn't really care that you have an iPhone,

which maybe, you know, maybe they want to sell to people with Android phones. But you would think that there would be some sort of connection there. Right. But that's a big change, like a really fundamental big change. Like in the new remote, which is basically a bunch of iPhone. control paradigms, right? Siri, touch, motion. Like, that's all the control pieces of an iPhone,

like in the remote. And then that thing runs iOS. So that's the big change. But then the actual experience of it is like, uh, right. It's a really good roku. Right. The first deck that we had a subheadline,

my first subheadline was Apple makes a really good rocoo. And I was like, that's a little mean. But true. Yeah. I got a text from David Pierce. He was like, why don't you just go with Apple makes it really good? right here's a little more inside baseball every time david publishes something or i publish something we text each other back and forth and call it crap that's just that's just that's just

regardless of what it is yeah i'm like that's real garbage we edit each other just basically just fuck with each other and that's as far as i can tell he published that thing with the surface book and i like i was like you should have started at the middle and reorganize this whole thing i mean at this point you should escalate to twitter just to make the sound into public we know it's there now. We know it exists. So I'm really curious about the Apple TV apps because you've mentioned a few of them. I haven't gotten it. I did pre-order it. Not sure

why, but I just had the instinct to hit pre-order and spend money. Yeah. What is out there right now? What is worth actually playing? So there's some game, it's really funny because all the apps are 100% gigantic iPhone apps. Like Periscope is like comedy zone. Like it's just a big iPhone app.

But it turns out some of the iPhone games get really fun when you make them huge and you can control them from all the way. So there's this game, which you can get on your phone right now. It's called Does Not Commute, and you literally just draw cars and it's a puzzle game. Right. Like, you have like 10, 20 cars. Like make sure they don't crash that thing.

Yeah, yeah. It's neat. So that's really fun in the TV. Jet Pactuary is really fun. Crossy Road. Crossy Road. No, crossy road is bullshit. Like, and I don't understand.

Wow. Like, fuck a crossy Road. You know what I'm saying? Are you just anti-froger in general? No, it's just crossyroader on the Apple TV. It does the thing. it does the exact wrong thing with the touchpad, where the touchpad is supposed to be like a one-to-one.

Yeah. It's like we already learned this with the Wii. Yeah. Like you don't want to do a swipe that's really an arrow key because then you might as well just push an arrow key. So the funny thing... Cross the road does exactly that. The funny thing about that is that it feels like Apple is going through this moment

where they have all these new human machine interface paradigms and they don't have a unified way to give them to people. 3D touch. Yeah. Nobody knows what it means yet. Yeah. This remote for the new Apple TV, nobody really knows what it means yet or how to use it. Yeah, they're not doing great on like the first party app, right?

They're not, there's no Apple TV app that's like, this is the future. Like, this is going to set the conversation for all the other. And that's true, I think, of 3D touch. Yeah. Where it's like, this is the future of previewing links in the web browser, but that's not it. Right, right. And then it's true on the Apple Watch, which I'm not wearing today. You're not Loggerfield?

I've got three dead ones upstairs. But it's true, like the digital crown and force touch and all the many, many ways to use the Apple Watch. There's no great... They just have all these new paradigms. And they haven't put one person in charge of, like, build the killer app for this particular paradigm. Right. That demonstrates all the ways you're supposed to use these features. Right.

And what they'll say to you, which is a fair... I don't know, a fair thing to say is we don't want to tell app developers. We want to see what the... They've been saying that since iPad 1. I mean... And sometimes that's a really fruitful conversation between Apple and developers. Sometimes it's a garbage fire.

And I think in some ways the Apple Watch has seen that so far. What's your favorite app on that thing? Time. It's the face. I'm not kidding. It's the face. How long do you show your Galaxy gear?

Do you ever wear it? I haven't worn it a couple years. It's the original Galaxy Gear in Rose Gold. Yeah. So it was really fun to wear when no one else had a smart watch and you control people at bars. Yeah. Since then, it's very big and not all that useful. Would you ever get another one?

I would get a smart watch. I would probably get a Moto 360 if they made them in like smaller sizes for lady wrists. Yeah. So you think that the small 360 is still too big? Yeah. Yeah, small 360 is bigger than the biggest watch. Like, and as a dainty wrist person myself, I need the same. small Apple Watch.

Fair. What's your favorite app on your Apple Watch? Weather. It's time and weather. That's all really is it for. If people are listening to this live, will you tweet at me and tell me

what your favorite Apple Watch app? But a native app, not like a whatever. Right. Not one of these bullshit apps. What's your favorite real native app? Just tweet at me. Or just tweet anything you want at Ross.

He's, oh no, Roscoe. Yeah, I'll, I'll respond. It won't make sense, but I'll do it. Tweet literally anything at Ross. Yesterday, Sam, Sheffer, just tweeted, please respond. Like he was lost in dire need of human content. I got a little more insight into that tweet.

It turns out that tweet was actually a poll, which I didn't realize. Because you can't see polls on anything except that. Oh. But on tweet deck, it looks like he's just the most thirsty human being alive. Oh, my God. How many cries of desperation have actually been polls in disguise? Yeah, well, today I tweeted burrito. Is that every cry of desperation?

I guess it is. But it's a multiple choice cry of desperation. We didn't realize that. Right. Anyhow, so there's the Apple TV. My take was, like, if you need an Apple TV, you should buy this one. Yeah. Because it works.

They're still offering the old one, right? They're still selling the old one. I know, Helen, hype check the Apple TV. I think it's equally hype as the Roku. They all seem the same. Yeah. They all did the same thing, right? They, like, put a bunch of apps because they can't get the deals to make their own service.

Right. So, like, okay, whatever. And if Apple can't know what? can. Where Apple doesn't want to spend the money, which is, I, like, does anybody else sit around imagine what you do at Apple's money? If you just, if you were just minting money. Would you buy beats?

Would that be your first move? Because that's what they did. Yep. You know, I'd like to hang out with Jimmy I. He's like, Jimmy Hymeans like, hey, Tim. Thanks for buying a company. That's a great Jimmy Island. That's totally good.

That's really good. really bad. But like, I don't know. Like, don't you think that they could just spend the money to get the deals? And maybe that doesn't make any business sense. And it probably doesn't because they didn't do it. But I always just think, like, what if I just demanded to make things better and spent money until they were? Which is not a good way to run a business again.

But isn't that in many ways, Google's mantra? Yeah. Like, they're spending countless amounts of money on projects that don't have any obvious near-term profitability, right? things like Calico. The Google car is years away from... Wait, is Calico the one where they just don't want you to die? Yeah. Like, how much money does it cost to be immortal?

Just keep... Look at that money that way. Like, all right. There's a scientist somewhere who's like, yeah. I'll figure it out. Just a guy in a coat. Just like, I don't... Larry Page is like, how much is it going to cost

for me to live forever? Scientists is like, I don't... Billion dollars. He's like, oh, you're a... I thought it would be more. Let me write too a check. It's terrible. Anyway,

what we finished your thought about Google? That's all I had. That's it. Well, it's just like, like Apple could presumably pay the money to like start its own over-the-top cable streaming service.

They could presumably not have to buy beats to get a streaming service and do their own. I mean, but they, you know, they're spending money in very targeted ways and making very, I think,

conservative bets on the future of media, which is, just seems strange to me. Like this, it's funny because this thing is a cube, right? It's, like, not a very interesting shape. But, like, to me, the Apple TV is, like, there's all these constraints and weird little things,

and Apple just, like, inflated the existing Apple TV to fill all of the available space, but they didn't actually move any of the walls. I mean, like, slow and conservative is Apple style. It's, like, it's why it's not 4K. It's why they wait so long on, like, USB standards. It's why, like, all these little, like, things. It's either a proprietary, a move,

or if it's a universal standard. Let's give it five years and see, like, if people actually use it. Well, I think, I think that also explains why they've been rumored to be doing this dance with Comcast for so long, right? I mean, you go back, what was it, five, six, seven years, Xbox 360 was doing the same thing. It was an IP-based cable box for some regional provider. So they can do that, right?

And then they would accomplish their goal by sleeping with the enemy. But can they negotiate those deals themselves? All right, I've got some favorite Apple Watch recommendations from the Twitter. Dark Sky, Swarm, Fantastical, from Germa. Anthony Dauphrio says his favorite watch app is VMO Golfers string tracking. Runner up goes to Google Keep.

You are crazy. What? If you are using Google Keep on your watch, on your Apple Watch, you are so deep in the tech hole like the... I mean, I appreciate it, and I applaud you.

Calendar, remote, stopwatch, uh, watch face, it's watch faces all the way down. Yeah. People like using Google hangouts in their watch, but he's using a Zen watch. That was a troll.

You just trolled me into talking about the Zen watch. I hope it's fun working at Asuse. Like, I don't know. I don't know what that's like. Wow. Damn, dude. Shots fired. The first Zen Watch was not garbage.

The second one seems to be garbage, but the first one was all right. I don't know. It's funny because you start talking about TVs and we ended up talking about watches. But it's the same thing. Like, it's funny how much discussion of the watch I cut out of the TV review. Because, you know, I reviewed the watch. And I was like, this is a new platform for Apple. I could do all kinds of things.

But they didn't tell you. you what to do. And then I was like, here's another new platform from Apple. It could do all kinds of things, but they didn't tell you what. It's like they just did all the same things everybody else. But there is no looming trillion dollar business roadblock that's stopping the watch from doing what Apple wants it to do. There is with the Apple TV.

That's the core difference. Right. It's the name is Brian Roberts. And he's just standing there. He's standing in the door of the Comcast building. Yes. But it's not even, it's Tomcast. Like, Comcast is not even in a whole country.

right like it's comcast and time Warner and RCN and charter and direct TV and I don't think I don't maybe disagree I don't think that it's the cable providers that are blocking Apple it's content providers I mean again Apple has been rumored to be talking to Comcast for a year about just rolling out a box no no no no so I have the info I don't know if that's still true but uh Walt on control alt delete told me that he heard from Steve Jobs and from Brian Roberts that Apple had been approached to make a cable box for Comcast that Steve Jobs wanted to do it. And then Brian Roberts was like, of course, to authenticate your cable box, you have to use this cable card and this middleware from cable labs. And Jobs was like, fuck you.

And that was like the end of the conversation. But he just wouldn't use their garbage middleware software to authenticate the box. Yeah. Which fair. Honestly, like, if Comcast kept up to me and said, I would like you to base your business on our software, I'd be like, no. I would rather just be. By the way, that's the same conversation that Apple won with the iPhone with AT&T eight years ago and has never lost since, right? Right, right.

They're still today the only phone maker that they can just do whatever they want with with firmware updates. Is this a good time to actually transition to talking about phones? Yeah, sure. Should I read an ad? Yeah, let's read an ad. And then we'll go into phones. All right.

I don't know. Is there anything else to say about the Apple TV? Open four. 30 seconds. Helen, final thoughts. I don't know. That's a new hype desk that I'm thinking. I mean, my TV is like your TV in the review and that it's imaginary.

Wait, so you don't have a TV? I don't have a TV. What do you watch television things on? A laptop. Really? Mm-hmm. Wow. Wow.

Wow. Do you have a TV? I have two TVs in the living room. Wow. The Xbox one and the PlayStation one. I don't, don't judge me. I feel like I should just have you and Chow on the show to talk about what that's like. That's the incredibly embarrassing.

You know most TVs have. multiple inputs, right? Yes, but you can't do it at the same time. So someone wants to play Halo and Charter. What are you going to do? This is what I said. We should have Chow and Ross. Just talk about what it's like to be

in an Xbox PlayStation couple. You remember when Sony made that TV where you could see two things at two different angles? I so wanted that. It was bad, though. That would have saved my relationship. Well, I, so I, whatever.

I'm not telling you about my TV. It's obviously very cool. I think you all saw it in the review. Chris, what do you have? Okay. I'm going to put. but Nelion Blaster. He actually has like a 25-year-old plasma.

No, no, no, no, no. No. Oh, God. Now I have a new plasma. What? So what? So the Kuro has moved to the bedroom. Yeah.

And then I have a new Panasonic VT-60, which I will say it looks beautiful. Does not look as good as my Kuro, but it's much larger. So, hey. The most garbage software, like, everyone at Panasonic should look at this thing and just be ashamed of what they have brought. Like, you turn it on it, like, you have to,

It shows you ads by default when you turn on, so you have to turn that off. It has a camera to use a proprietary video conferencing. So you push it and a camera pops up. But it's just a release in a spring. So when the cameras popped up, that's it. You have to walk up to it and like tuck it. If it had a motor inside to pull the camera down, I'd be more concerned. Anyway, it's a very nice-looking TV, but literally everybody,

Panasonic should not be allowed to make software. Yeah. So my TV buying decision was made primarily. by what I could carry up my five flights of stairs by myself. So I limited myself to a 32-inch Samsung, which also shows me ads in real time while I'm watching shows. Like a Dunkin' Donuts commercial will come on, and then I get this full Dunkin' Donuts experience on my TV.

Oh, my God. And then it stays there for like three minutes. It's the worst thing. Wait, is every time you turn on the TV? No, I'll be watching a show, and a Dunkin' Donuts ad comes on, and then I get an interactive Dunkin' Donuts experience. That's the future.

Wow. That's me saying the QVC app is the future. Yeah. That's what it is. It's like, finally, it's interactive TV. Helen just shaking out of me. That's what every brand wants. They want you to like see the thing on the TV.

You want to become immersed in the Dunkin' Donuts. Imagine if while you were watching the Super Bowl, you could just get Bud Light pipes directly to you. Like a motorized straw just comes out of the TV. This is Panasonic's dream. There's some guy in the lab. Like a string. in a can of beer.

I'm going to figure this out. It's a flat screen egg. Why does he have a string? Someone just told me, Steve Spence, why Slack your favorite Apple Watch app? Don't do that to yourself. I'm just calling on people directly on Twitter. And Trello. Same thing.

Slack and Trello and the Apple Watch are not acceptable. Like, fine. City Mapper, says Vincent Rubino. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's actually, I use the city Mapper app. It's good. Celebrity Oxford comma says Celebrity Oxford comma is his favorite app. That's not an app.

That's not an app. Look, whether you're designing, presenting, writing, or building, Dropbox makes it simple to work together on any file. I don't know if they have an Apple Watch app, but if you're using the ad on a watch, like, the same problem is Slack. Anyway, what would you do with Dropbox in the Apple Watch? You would just... You would look at files. Yeah, look at lists of files. Oh, those files today.

Thank God. Thank God I interrupted this conversation rudely. Over 400 million people around the world already used Dropbox. And now there's Dropbox just for your business. Dropbox helps you work the way you want. All the things you love about Dropbox with enterprise-grade security,

administrative controls. You can help your team work together on any file type on any device, presumably watches, simply insecurely. There's customizable sharing controls like expiration dates and passwords or shared links.

And Dropbox for business enables your entire team to work they want on any file from anywhere. This line says, please add lib what I like best about Dropbox. What do you like best about Dropbox, you know, it's comforting to me.

It's just there. It surrounds you. You're developed by the Dropbox experience. Yeah, I never think to myself I can't access my Dropbox. Unless I'm out and about, just rocking my smartwatch. And then I think to myself, I wish I could confirm those files are there. Well, with the Apple Watch app that we don't know exists, you can. Over 100,000 businesses already use Dropbox for business.

Dropbox business. It's all yours. Is there a promo code or? No. I just read this stuff and try not to screw it up quite as badly as I always do. Okay, so let's talk about some phones. Okay. Vladarview, the H-GC-A-9. Actually, Helen, I'm going to, this is your time to shine,

because Helen is still using a Galaxy S-5. That's true. No, it's an S-2. It's so old. It's got to fascinate. It's real old. It is older than Caitlin. Wait, wait, wait.

Is it an unbranded S-2? Because that would be a rare commodity. Well, the S-2 was objectively, like, better than the S-3. Wow. Shots fired. Yeah. Okay, tell me why. I have this opinion that the even-numbered galaxy phones are always better.

Wow, this is some Star Wars stuff going on right here. Yeah, the Galaxy S3 had really bad battery life. It just, like, didn't feel good. It felt very plastic. Galaxy S-4, big upgrade. Yeah. Galaxy S-5, it's been great. It also looks like someone chewed on the corner because I keep dropping it.

So I'm looking forward to upgrading. And sadly, I will be getting, sorry, Samsung, I will be getting a Nexus 5X. Are you really? That's what you're doing. Okay. I'm going to ask you if, because we did the A9, which is basically, Vlad called it the Android iPhone, which is true. Yeah. And then we have the droid turbo two here.

Yep. Which. Oh, gosh. No. It's so much fun to do. Which is shadowproof. Yeah. What the MotoX-Force is that the international version was announced this morning?

I don't know. I'm out of that world, man. Chris, tell me about the coolest Bugatti currently available. Actually, Bugatti does not currently make a car. Is it Shatter? They have no models. Wow. What?

Yep, because the Veyron is out of production and their next model is not released yet. Tell me about San Diego Chargers kicker Josh Lambo. Wow, that was just like a long buildup. He got so excited about Josh Lambo that he texted me about him when he saw him on the field. Oh my God. That's great. He missed a kick in the backer's game. I was like, oh, Lambo missed again.

I can't get anything right. It's not a sick Lambo. No. Or he was sick Lambo. Anyway, so Helen, why the Nexus? I like stock Android. Yeah. Right now I'm running like Apex on top of touchwiz.

It's not great. Yeah. I'm looking forward to getting stock Android. I've never owned an iPhone. and you're not going to. And I don't really want one. I don't know what to do without the back button and the menu key. Yeah.

And I'm really good at swipe. Swipe is my favorite thing. Yeah, Swipe is good. I'm unable to type without swipe. From when I hear, it's still somewhat buggy on the iPhone, although they take third-party keyboards.

So I bought my first Android phone because I wanted swipe, and I thought it was a fun toy, and that's been what's kept me on Android. But doesn't stock Android, for several versions now, they've had their own version of swipe built into the stock keyboard, right? That's true, but I've been using Swipes keyboard. I may revisit that, but I have been using the actual Swipe keyboard.

Wait, why 5 and not 6? Why don't do the big phone? It's really big. I feel like I can't use it with one hand. It's really pretty. Like, it feels great. It's really beautiful. But I think the 5X is like a better size for my hand.

I also like being able to put my phone in my back pocket, even though that means it's constantly falling on the ground. But so you should get that. What's going to happen by the end of this is I'm going to convince you get a droid turbo too. And then I'm just going to whip this, this one over across the room. Don't you mean it? No, no, don't know this was coming.

Literally before the show started, she said, please don't throw that. What carrier are you on? I'm on Verizon. So I can get the joy. Well, I was thinking about getting the MotoG because it has a really long battery life and it's pretty indestructible. I guess the droid turbo two is pretty similar. Yeah, we should go through it.

So Ross, you want to take us through? I can't, Chris, can you, What's it back to me? It's under some crap. The phone is gone, Ross. I mean, so right now we have Jake reviewing it, so I sold Jake's phone for this. But essentially it is the MotoX only now it's... Wait, is that Jake's personal phone that you've been throwing around?

Yeah. No, it's the review unit. Well, it's Jake's personal review unit right now. Oh, how long got the phone? Thanks. You don't have to gently put it down. Just throw it. There's nothing gentle about that phone.

I will say that we've been tossing around just viciously now. Yeah. And the sides and back of the phone are totally scuffed. Yeah. Screen. Did you shatter it yet? No. No, so basically it's a more powerful MotoX. It's got a newer snap dragon, but the big thing, of course, is that it's shatter-proof.

It's not stab-proof, apparently. I was told not to take a knife to this. Yeah. But it is shatter-and-drop-proof. Is it fire-proof? Can you light it on fire? Can we find out? It's shatter-proof.

So it's got, like, five layers of, like, glass and aluminum. Right? But I will say that one of the things I like best about new phones is how tightly laminated the display is to the cover glass. Oh, yeah. And this is just a huge step backwards. It's like, I can never break this, but this screen is five inches away from my finger. You know, like, it is a very strange. And it's got like a weird, I'll let Jake do the review, but it's got a weird parallax.

Mm-hmm. I'm just really picky about screens. Yeah, you're more cognizant of that screen here than you are on things. Yeah. So that's that one. And I just think it's funny that droid still exists. Am I crazy for thinking that it's funny? Like, that Motorola can be co-opted into giving one of their best devices to Verizon every time

and being like, this is a droid. Well, I think Motorola is in that awkward position where they don't, I mean, they have so little brand leverage that, like, they just need to do whatever carriers tell them to do. And they have this enormous ongoing deal with Verizon. Verizon is so big that they probably don't even know or understand how to stop making droids. They just have it. There's a contract somewhere that someone signed in 2009. It just keeps happening.

And so Motorola keeps getting money for them. I mean, this one has like this awful Verizon checkmark on the front. But the old school one too. Yeah, it's not even the right logo. Wow. I mean, it's so embarrassing. Get out of here. Get out of here, phone.

I'm done with you. Huh? It's so stressful to do that. Every time I do it, I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to hear that sound. And this is the time it's going to shatter. I'm actually, I've been wondering why more phones aren't water for the Shatterproof is like, I get it. But like, why aren't more fun's waterproof?

Like, they should be getting tougher now. You know what's waterproof? My GalaxyS5. Is it? Yep. Oh, yeah, that was the one where they made the ads where I was just like people like holding them under sinks, right? Yeah.

Yes. We did some photo shoots in a pool. Of course you did. Wow. Man, it's going to be sad for me to not see you with that case on your ass phone. Like, it's like a real part of like the Helen experience is like the old Samson thing. The old Samsung gear. I don't know.

I'm just saying. And then you're going to be a Nexus person. You're all high and mighty. Yeah. You'll be walking around with your stock Android and mediocre camera. Yeah. Dieter will still make fun of me.

Chris will still call it my Galaxy S2. Oh, yes, I will. Nothing will change. Nope. Deeter has been changing a phone so rapidly lately that for a while I just couldn't text him. Yeah. Yeah.

I've had that experience too. Yeah. Like, I just couldn't. It's like, we'll be a blue or a green bubble today. Let's find out. No, literally for a while, It was like my phone was just like, you know what? This guy?

Too hard. We'll not send. I get that with Dan too, actually. Yeah? Because he, yeah, he keeps going back and forth too. I am. All right. So then we should talk about the A9.

So that's a droid turbo too. I mean, it's a droid. I would be shocked. Actually, tweet at me about this. Would you even, would anybody out there consider buying a droid turbo too? The shadow proof thing is great, but like, I think what people, the last droid people really liked that I encountered was the max. Right, the battery life is great.

Yeah. But now you can get that. Right, isn't that the MotoX something? I'm sure it's like the MotoX longevity or something like that. I don't know offhand. I mean, it's fine. Chris just tweeted, no, I would not. You told people to tweet you.

Thanks, Chris. Thanks, buddy. Literally no one is responding to this question. Usually I say tweet at me and people just endlessly tweet at me. They don't know what to think. But I was like, tell me if you would buy a droid turbo too. and everyone's like, I'm going to withdraw that information. You know, the one thing that sucks about droids, the one thing, the one and only thing,

is that they stopped with the maxes. I thought that was like a really cool and innovative thing they did. Like if you want to go ahead and take on the burden of a thicker phone, you can, if you want to, and you get the better battery life. And what we say thicker phone isn't like, it's still probably thinner than anything from three years ago. Right, right. Yeah, I wish, I don't know why the entire industry has coalesced around this notion that it is okay to have a phone that you're going to stress about making it through a day with.

Like by 7 or 8 p.m. if you've been using your phone a lot through the day, with any phone on the market, basically, you're going to be stressing. Yep. And there's no reason for this. Make the phone a half millimeter thicker and fix the problem. Well, the industry just had it. Instead, we're just going to make a bunch of ubiquitous USB batteries. Start making it look a little prettier, and people will just pocket those as like the spare.

For 60 bucks. Yeah. 60 bucks. Oh, there's a droid max two coming out. Oh, there is? Yeah. One person said they would buy the droid turbo too. I would buy the Macs.

Yeah. All right. Well, tweet at me. Yeah. Okay, so then we should talk about the A-9. Yes, the iPhone. The iPhone. So the A-9 was here.

So Vlad reviewed it, obviously, in London, but we had one here, too. It looks, and we should talk about this. Right. Yes, like, HGC to the aluminum design first. Yes, they did ugly antenna lines first. Yeah. But. But this thing is an iPhone.

It's like, it's like they, like, the way to prove that you were the first innovator is to not copy the person who copied you the best. Right. Right. And it looks exactly like an iPhone clone. Like, exactly. Except it's a little bit crappier in, like, in many ways. Right. Some of like the button placement seems a little, like, off, almost like a manufacturer's defect.

Yeah, like, all the ports are just like all over the place. And the camera is, like, it's in the middle, you know, like. I'm pretty convinced that HGC has been backed so far. far into a corner at this point that they're just they're actively trolling and and i'm not even kidding like they're like you know what screw you apple we did aluminum first we did antenna lines first we're just going to go ahead and make an iphone yeah you know and i i have a sort of a perverted respect for that yeah you know well they so the theory that i've heard which whatever i don't know if it's i honestly don't know if this or not is that apple hc signed that patent deal a long time ago

and so that there's no restriction on them just copying the iPhone. Wow. Because otherwise Apple just, like, of course Apple would. It looks exactly like the iPhone. Yeah. But if they have like a licensed Apple's design patent, so he's like, yeah. Well, they can.

Yeah, we did. They can sue, but Apple also knows from experience at this point that what will end up happening is five-year-old phones get barred from sale, which is what happened with Samsung. Yeah, yeah. No, you're never going to be able to buy Galaxy fascinate ever. The Fascinate's my favorite one. Like, of all of the phones that came out, like, the Verizon Fascinate was so obviously the one that was designed for Verizon to have an iPhone thing.

Yeah. That was before they launched the iPhone. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh, God. That was the one. That was the one that was just like, Samsung, you know what you're doing. Yeah.

Like, you know, you know what you did. Like, the one, what was the one at T&T? The Captivate? Yeah. The Cactivate was, like, dope. Oh, there was an Armani version of that phone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What?

The Tampi, it was really cool. Yep. It was, like, squared off. It looked really neat. Mm-hmm. And the fascinate was like... Was an iPhone. What if we made an iPhone?

Yeah, I remember all four carriers had different named versions of that same phone. What was your first phone, your first smartphone? Modern smartphone. It was the HTC Incredible, too. Ooh, that's a good one. Yeah, it was a good phone. And you know what? If HTC had stuck with removal...

removable batteries. Yeah. They may have tempted me away from the Nexus, but nothing has removable, eh, we can even say that word, removable batteries anymore, which is tragic. Wow.

This does. No, something. I always carry an extra battery. It's amazing. Something still has... When we're learning on the show is that Helen is the deepest phone nerd on us.

Yeah. Like, the deepest, Helen is behind the Iverge hashtag. Helen's the ringleader. She's our own personal gamer game. Yeah. Oh.

Ouch, oh, out. Sorry, well, it's on the sheet. I'm going to talk about it soon. I'm the front lines of like dealing with Iverge, you know I? Even my brother does nothing when he sees me except say Iverge every 10 minutes just to mess with me.

Wow. And I'm saying, what if you, what if that's you? What if you're a big boss? What if you're big boss? It's just a metal gear reference. Don't worry about it. That's cool.

I'm just saying, what if there's a shocking twist? And you are all of our YouTube subscriber. Wait, wait, there's only one way to solve this. Hype Check Iverge. Ooh. Can she do it? Bus. No, wait, that's not even.

Okay, whatever. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We'll let it go. We'll let it go. We'll let it go. Sorry, Sam. I was looking at YouTube comments on the Apple TV review last night.

Yeah. Definitely, like, people were like, who's this guy? And one guy was like, he's the CEO of the Verge. And I was like, That's what I am. You're big boss. That's it. I am the CEO of my verge, as it turns out.

Of course, that's what I am. All right, let me read one more. We should talk about Sapphire. We should talk about some other stuff. Chris, is there more stuff to say with these phones? I feel like a lot of other stuff happened this week. I have nothing else to say about these phones. It could be real with you.

We should talk about the Tokyo Motor Show a little bit, maybe. I feel like a lot of other things. happened this week. It's been a week. It's like been a crazy week. When we have these crazy weeks, it's like, my entire focus is like, I'm going to think about gadgets

because they'll keep me safe. Nothing can go wrong here. All right, let me read this thing. And then we'll, that's this one. Oh, man. It's our friends. Oh, yeah. It's our friends in the cloud.

Soft layer delivers a cloud build for integration. This is so wrong. I'm going to keep going. Your business, applications, and computational workloads are unique. So you deserve cloud services that meet your specific needs. I honestly can't keep doing this. Because I don't know if I can say the words, Provisions, dedicated servers in that voice and I'll lose it.

Software is one of the only cloud providers that provisions dedicated servers and virtual servers, otherwise synchral cloud, from a single, seamless platform. All this is on demand, all this connects the same Open API, all of it's connected to a global private network. This allows you scale your workloads up and down quickly. That would have been really bad in the voice and have ample space for your storage intensive tasks.

Soft player, as you well know, is an IBM company, duh. In fact, SoftLayer uses, IBM uses softwares its cloud infrastructure foundation for everything in the IBM Cloud. So even if you're not looking for infrastructure, and honestly... Who isn't? Duh.

I mean, that's the CEO of the Iverge. I can tell you that every day I think about all the infrastructure needs. You can benefit from software. software when you use IBM stuff. So all the listeners have the opportunity to get $500 of cloud infrastructure by visiting software.com slash podcast. You can order bare metal servers. You can order virtual servers.

You can get storage, networking, bizarrely candy apples. It's weird. And software has 24 data centers around the world. All of the servers and services are connected to software's unique network of networks, which separates public, private, and management traffic. So all of those networks and all the traffic to and from your cloud infrastructure is more efficient. You can also automate and control your cloud infrastructure with a granular API or on the easy-use software customer portal.

You can also just walk outside, scream at the sky. It works. Hold on a million else at cloud. It's close. That's amazing. Why aren't you sinking? Separate my management traffic. It's really weird.

Data centers across the country, actually. People are like, I got to go fix the cloud. It's the worst joke. just please God visit softlayer.com slash podcast. I'm assuming, by the way, that many of you

constantly are buying softflayer stuff because they keep coming back. So thank you so much to soft layer. Dot com slash podcast for existing, for SoftLayer, for putting up with this,

and for you for consistently buying $500 worth of server, storage network and security on a cloud built for integration from SoftLayer. Can we talk about clouds for a minute? The runway blimp, I think, really captured our imagination.

Oh, God, the loose blimp! Yes! It's been such a week. Did we cover the runaway blimp? We did. We did. And there's this picture of it crashing in Pennsylvania. It looks like a Led Zeppelin, like, album cover.

Where it's like, there's just this, like, it's at this weird angle, and it's just coming, it's bearing down. And it looks terrible. Terrifying. And it did actually, all kidding aside, take out power for 20,000 people. That's not good. No, it's not good. So I was busy with the video crew making the Apple TV video. Tell me, just let's get into the alert response of the brim. So where did we first see the blimp? Do you know? I'm assuming it popped on social. I think I saw, yeah, it was on Twitter. There was a fire department, someone in Pennsylvania that said, if you see this bill, call 911. I want to tick-top of how the Verge Newsroom responded to a runaway blitz.

Chris has a Twitter alert for all things blimp. Yes. Yes. And it was an APB for this blimp. Call 911 if you see it. So we did a little investigation and found out that it had come off its tether. It had become a rogue airship. Is that like an official?

That's like that was the president's rejected. Secret Service name. When the president is aboard the plane, it's the Air Force One when he thought it's... Roegovir. Wait, isn't... No, his secret service name is Renegade. Is it? Obama's Secret Service name is Renegade.

That's a good name. It's his chubby brother. It's named Roe Gersh. That takes me back to, in the last Republican debate when they were all asked to say what their secret service name would be. And some of the... Like, some of the... I think it was Ben Carson didn't even understand the question.

Right. But anyway, so yeah, this rogue airship was traversing the northeast, and then it came down. And the internet was done being captivated today. Did it come down by force, or was it just like... No, I think it just naturally... Just got tired. Yeah. And had a really good Twitter account at Aberdeen Blimp.

Oh, really? Yeah, you could follow it on Twitter. Do they, like, shoot it down? No, I think it just came down. They wouldn't shoot it down in a way that would cause it to take... take out 20,000 people's power, I don't think. Right. Type check the blimp.

Hype. Yeah, great. Hype check the blimp and the runaway goats. No, llamas. They're llamas. They're romeway llamas. No one cares about a goat that runs away. Yeah, llamas are cooler than goats.

Yeah, for sure. They have longer next. All right. That's the verge cast. All right. It's just, you know, it's weird to miss these things that captivate Twitter. We always say the internet, but it's really just Twitter. Yeah.

Right? It's really just the tiny number of people use Twitter who are like, we're the internet. And it is a tiny number. Twitter's earnings this week, 60 million monthly activities. And they're not growing at all. Kind of stagnant, yeah. It's funny because I was going to say tweet at me if you use Twitter, but I mean, that's, I don't know. I don't know how to solve that problem. Why do people use Twitter? Why do we, why do you have Twitter open? Because that's where news breaks, right? I mean, our news team, relies on Twitter to do its job. I mean, yeah, I think all news gatherers have, like, made a social contract saying,

we're just going to put it on Twitter, let everyone know what's happening, but you don't really get, like, a lot of response other than that. Right. And, you know, being narcissists, it's like, oh, you're talking to me. Well, Twitter's one of the few, like, real-time. Right. I don't know. It's great during the debates.

It's great during, like, baseball games and stuff. Well, to bring it all the way back to the Apple TV, one of the things I said was there's not a single app on the Apple TV. that actually enhances watching TV as much as just having Twitter open on your phone. Right. And I think that's actually one of the biggest challenges because the idea of convergence in the 90s, and I've had like virtually every one of these boxes, right? I've had a web TV, I had, that's where the IR blastered.

That's my deep genetic hatred of IRBlasters came in. So we had a web TV, we had, oh God, we had the original TiVo at a Windows Media Center, which was just, just never worked ever. I had every Google TV, which was a stupid idea. Just down the line, I had a boxy box. Do you know what kind of drunk idiot you have to have a boxy box? But you had both boxies, didn't you? Oh, the box of box boxy TV was such a bad product that I couldn't review it.

That's right. And I honestly didn't know how to begin the review of the product. Like, it is a box. Boxy made it. It does nothing. Like, there was nothing to evaluate. That sounds objective. It's just like, but, you know, because they're, like, yeah, yeah.

Like, how would you review a car with no engine? Well, technically any EV doesn't have an engine. Or, like, the Flintstone Mobile. No, but, like, if it was just a car, it was like the shell of a car and you got in it and other people whispered ideas to you about movement. Like, that was the boxy TV. I will say that the boxy box to this day, still has the coolest industrial design of any device ever.

It's like a sinking cube, which is what the company was. It's very metaphorical, actually. That was the one, I mean, like, I'm just saying that the living room space is like, it's been such a disaster for so long. Like, Logitech almost stopped existing. Yeah. Because they made, the CEO of Logitech was like, you know what? We're finally going to do it.

We're going to partner with Google and we're going to put crap under your TV. running some fork of Android. Yeah. And it almost destroyed the company. Within like six months, you could get Logitex, Google TV thing for like $10 at Best Buy. Yeah. And they went all out. I actually, here's a little window in my personal life.

I have been sternly instructed by my wife that this weekend is a weekend in which my office will be, like all of the old gadgets will be removed because it was just like out of control in there. And one of them, but she like showed it. She's like, she's like, What the fuck is this webcam for Google TV? She's like, there's no value here. I don't think she knew what, she was just like holding a block. She's like, what is this?

And I was like, looking at it. And I was like, I can't even begin to explain to you why we have this product in our own. But so all of them, like over and over and over again, like they're trying. So like in the 90s when Microsoft, almost is always Microsoft, they're like, we're going to put a PC on that TV. And they would fail. But none of them had to deal with the fact that you had a phone in your hand. And now that you've got a phone or a tablet or almost certainly with you when you're watching television, it's even harder to see why you want something interactive on your TV.

Well, so the closest thing to being what I want, and you're going to vehemently disagree with me on this, is Xbox Snap. Because the problem is that they never used it for anything useful. Correct me if I'm wrong, Ross. I don't think there's a Twitter app for Xbox One that works with, snap. There's Twitter integration that lets you upload video clips, like game clips, but there is no timeline that you can snap to the side of the display.

But that's also the biggest question. Why would you want to read on a big TV? Because then you have that second screen experience without having to hold the phone or the tablet, right? It's just that you see it, like scroll by. But that's just, it's like, what if I was the idiot who controlled the cry on under television news? Like, I don't know.

I would rather, like, look at my phone and put it down. like watch TV. Yeah. Like, what would you put over there? Your Twitter timeline. So if you're watching the VMAs, you don't have to have to look at your phone and, you know, post your quip. You can just say Xbox post quip.

And then the Cortana auto generates a quip based on your groans. No. Cortana, take two mildly relevant topics from the news. Craft joke matching them together. Post to Twitter. No, that's the future. Yeah. Make me funny

Please, God Alexa, make me funny Oh, I haven't done this I've been meaning to walk into my door And just say Alexa, help And see what she says She's always there All she really can do is set timers

And play Wilco That's pretty much what I ask her to do It's a remarkable useful I have it integrated with my hue system So it can control all my lights Oh, that's right Oh, we can get into this So Chris is dumb

We've got into it that. Yeah, that's not new. No, and this is, no, but I think it's safe to say if you've been listening to the show when you know our long shared history. I love Chris. Love working with Chris. Chris is so wrong about the Harmony Remote that it's like threatening the fabric

of our relationship. Because he posted this review to our site that was a glowing review of the new heart. They finally got it. Ah, it's great. Control the few lights. I never said they finally got it. disco world at home changing colors

for Harmony remotes I never once said they finally got it So I did I had this like weird How do you pronounce Lifex? Lifex?

I have a weird Wi-Fi lightball that I never saw Oh yeah yeah yeah And I was like So I bought the Harmony because I was like I got this Harmony one

The batter is dying The paint is rubbing off the front I mean the things are garbage So I'm gonna buy the new one because Chris says it's good Yeah I sent it back

Immediately sent it back It is garbage What are your specific complaints with it? Okay. Let's go through them. It is not a remote control. It is an attempt to hack everything in my home with a weird Wi-Fi hub and shitty software

in the form of a black plastic box that sometimes has some relationship to remote control that is badly designed. But that box is your friend. My friend sucks at his job. No, no, no. So the box is very important. The hub, the Harmony Hub. The Harmony Hub.

This box is important for a couple reasons. One, it makes it so you don't need line of sight to any of your devices. So you want to hide them behind a credenza, for instance, which many of us do. Top of my list. No, no, no, no. I've got to get a credenza. One, acquire a credenza. Two, hide everything behind it.

Not only does the hub itself emanate IR in every direction, so it can control a lot of stuff without needing to get a signal from the remote. You can do that. But it also has two ports for IRBlasters in the back that you can string wherever you want. Yeah, that's the future. That's great. But on top of that, the elite, as with the touch, or excuse me, the ultimate before it, also has an IRR blaster on itself.

So you don't have to blast through the hub. But you can't not have the hub, right? Correct. In the hub, in the software associated with the hub, in the iPhone app, and the cloud backend, all of that is trash. You never have to touch the iPhone app except to set it up. Then you're done. You're done after that. You're done.

The iPhone app is one of those apps. This is it. This is a hard verge editorial stance. If your iPhone app hasn't been updated for the iPhone 6 and it still has the gigantic menu bar, I'll give you that. Your company is stupid. I'll give you that. And you should be out of business.

I will absolutely give you that. That is fair. It's a hard fact. It means you hate me. You hate your customers. You hate your, come on. Anyway. So I set it up and I like try to turn something on.

And it like, it screws up. And then I push the help button, which is what you're supposed. And then it's like reflashing your remote from the Harmony Cloud. The last thing in the world a remote control should do is connect to the cloud to figure out how to turn my TV on. That is not acceptable. So a couple things. I'm a hub veteran because I had the... A hub veteran.

Stockholm Syndrome. I had the Harmony Ultimate beforehand, which uses basically the same hub. So that sync will happen occasionally at random, but it is not, it doesn't happen every time you hit help. You just ran into a bad situation. You had a bad moment.

Yeah, and then I put it back in its box, and I set that bad moment back to Amazon and received my $350 back. If you had spent... And then I had a great moment with my $350 where I considered it in my life. Look, I think, first of all, I will admit with you,

that the remote situation in general. That is not convinced by you. Hype check. Don't even. Don't get her involved. She's not doing. Wait, we know, I didn't even ask you. No, no, rewind, rewind, rewind, rewind.

I didn't ask you. You can't take it back. Look, I will admit that the remote situation in general is desolate. Yeah, it's terrible. It's the only one you can buy. It's the only one you can buy. There aren't that many good.

There's things like heel. You can also buy used Harmony On Amazon eBay. I mean, the dock is too big. It's long. It's got a long dock. This one has like a cup. Yes. It's stupid.

The cup is better. No, the cup doesn't take up space on your. It's a charging cup. The cup take no space. It's never coming back on the show again. There's no space required for the cup. Lots of space required for the long dock. All right.

And that... Stop saying long time. I'm just saying. Stupid broad. Logitech, I'll come to your house. Wherever you live. I will help you make a better remote. The Logite does not have a home.

Clearly. It's like... Because they make this garbage remote. There has no sense of how people live. Build a house, Logitechitech. I'll come to it. I will say that our, um, our, our review products manager,

William Savona, a good friend and co-worker of ours, bought the elite at my recommendation. The first one that he bought was defective, so he sent it back. He had it replaced. The second one was defective, so he sent it back. And he's currently waiting for his third one. Are he sure it doesn't work right? He just has good taste?

But he keeps getting it. No, he says the hub doesn't work at all. So, I mean, actually, you might be. Which is also what I'm saying. Yeah, you might be right. I was, I do find interesting that Apple did not even try to make a universal remote. Like, there's nothing about the Apple TV remote that,

that pre, like, it just assumes that you have other remotes. Right. Right. They have the volume keys on there because they know that you, if you're using Apple TV, you probably want to change volume. Yeah, it's like if you had, if all you had was a television and the Apple TV, it could be your only remote. If you never watch.

Anything else. Yeah. Right. But otherwise, yeah. But it's funny because I actually got into a fight with Apple. Like, I was in the briefing, and I was like, why doesn't have a power button? Like, we don't need a power button. We'll just turn on your TV with HTMLC, which is a fine, although idealistic answer.

And I was like, but most people don't have it. And I like, most people do. And I was like, wow. Okay. So I get home. HMISC, garbage standard. Doesn't work well. It doesn't work with my receiver and stuff.

It got to the point where Apple was like sending me pages of my receiver's instruction manual. So, like, walk me through. So like whatever, like rebooted it, like reset it. It worked for a little bit. But fine. So you can get it all to work. But then what happens is it's a huge touchpad with a button. So it's super easy to click.

And if you just accidentally click it while it's lying in your couch, A, everything will just turn on, which is not a good thing. Or if you're watching something else, it'll just switch you to the Apple TV. It's like a Trojan horse. It's like always lurking to be like Apple TV. Yeah. Which is why you have a power button because that'll allows you to choose to turn things on.

Yeah. I suspect the next version of this thing has a power button. It can't not. Too many people are going to be annoyed by how this thing behaves with CEC. Because it just wants to, like, if you have it around, you will accidentally push one of its buttons. I welcome Apple's involvement in the universal remote world. If they put their mind in making Universal Remote...

It's never going to have it. Yeah, no, but the Apple TV remote with a power button and a couple extra buttons would be 80% of the way there. And then... How many do you keep asking? pub that can blast IR in every direction and control your hue lights. That's a really good idea. No.

All right. So that, oh my God, Helen's here. Helen's like, she can engage. Usually it's like Nicola who's like, I don't know, look at the verge on stuff. Yeah. Engage. Yeah. Well, so you can follow the verge lots of places.

You can follow the verge on Snapchat, the real verge. You can follow the verge on Periscope at Verge, Twitter at Verge. You can follow us on YouTube at The Verge. Subscribe. Tell them about your Instagram situation. Oh, yeah, we just broke 200,000 followers on Instagram. We are about to pass some of our rivals on Instagram. Mashable.

Mashable. Sam. Sorry, Sam. We are only, we are only 4,000 followers behind Mashable right now. We're growing at about twice the rate. If you follow us on Instagram at Verge. Also unfollow Mashable. You will help me.

You will help me in this quest. Wow. If any of you can find 4,000 people to immediately unfollow Mashable and follow the verge, that would be choice. Yeah. Actually, you would only have to be 2000, technically. Yeah. But actually, it's 2001, because you really need to, like, sure, that's high. Sorry.

We're like, this is like quantitative shots fired. So that was the Vergecast. And I'm saying, we've broken some phones. We've broken some hearts. We, we're going to crush Mashable. Thank you so much for listening. hit us up on iTunes. Please rate us.

Also check out VirG ESP with Emily and Liz. What's Tech with Chris Plant. This week it's on Minecraft, which is fun. Walt and I actually, the new episode of Control Walt Delete is up, where it should be up by the time you're listening to this. Walt and I actually talked about Apple TV for about 45 minutes yesterday

and went really deep on it. So all that's at iTunes.com. slash The Verge. Thank you so much for listening. I need to thank BrainTree for sponsoring today's episode of The Vergecast. Braintree gives you a full-stack payment solution. Support for all payment types your customers might want.

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