The Vergecast - Bad Millennial

Episode Date: June 12, 2015

On this week's show, special guest Nicola Fumo from Racked joins us to talk about Apple. But we couldn't get to Apple right away, because Oculus up and decided to announce a million VR things. So Dieter Bohn had feelings about those VR things. Then Nilay Patel had feelings about WWDC things and Emily had feelings about Apple Music things. Then Nicola had feelings about Millennials. That's what The Vergecast is for: feelings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, everybody. Hello. That's how the show starts now. Just me going, hey, everybody. It's, look, here's the truth. It is June 12th, 2015. And this is the Vergecast, which is a show that I think today

is going to be just all over the place. For one extraordinarily special reason. But here, let me just do a quick introductions. I'm Neilie Patel. Emily Yoshita is here, because we're going to talk about Drake, basically full time. Dieter is here as well.

Yes, hi. And then here's why. I am so excited. I'm ridiculously excited on this June 12th, 2015. Sam Schaeffer is not here. There's a great story why Sam isn't here. And taking Sam's place is something that I've wanted to have happened for a long time. Nicola Fumo from racked.com is here.

Hi. Hey. And RACT is. Do you tell us? What is Ract? Ract is the incredibly cool fashion shopping site that happens to share an office building and parent company with The Verge. It's true. So our job is to be.

In the communal kitchen. Yeah, we flew her in. I was going to be in the communal kitchen looking at weird verge guys and being like, nah. That's it. The hype desk is remarkably stark. That's just like gray and black. Yeah.

I work in the business of stuff and I hate things. You're perfect for this show. So you might have seen, if you watch your Apple Watch review, Nicholas in the Apple Watch review, I did a video with Nicola for a rack about the Apple Watch. So I've been wanting to do more stuff for Nicola for a long time. But the reason Sam isn't here, which is amazing, is that if our show,

secret? It's not a secret. I can say this. I mean, look, it's not going to be secret if you watch local news in Kansas City. That's why Sam is out shooting an episode of Top Shelf with our video producer Trey Shallahorn, who's going to be on the show this time. He's usually behind the camera, but he's going to be on the show. They are doing an episode on water toys, like water jet packs and crazy stuff. They're in Kansas City right now writing what I believe to be the world's tallest water slide or something like that. The Kansas City local news was so excited. that the virgins they are videotaping the water slide, that the local news is now covering Sam and Trey

riding a water slide. Who are making a story. Who are making a story about the water. So it's a total crazy. And the best part about it is that I think Trey is like not super pumped about the water slide. Like it's like really tall. Well, he has an injury right now.

Yeah. And I'm just desperately hoping that there is like a local news segment of like a man freaks out on water slide. He's dangling off the side of it. It won't even be an area man story because you start from there. It'll be like symmetrical New York man. Can't handle our waterslide. This video is going to be amazing when we put it up on top shelf because Tray Shalhorn is by a wide margin the most beautiful man that works for the verge.

Very symmetrical. And that's true. I don't even take that as an insult. You could try. Yeah, just everybody knows it's true. It's like saying, well, this guy went to Harvard. like yeah but I just like cocky New Yorker

defeated by local water slide yeah that would be amazing anyway so that's why Sam isn't here he'll be back soon but in the meantime we have Nicola yeah who I will say this we have to talk a lot about WBC there's actually while we're taping this I don't know what that acronym is don't worry that's why you're here so let me tell this story but there's one thing we have to do we have to like finish the housework oh okay so I did not tell

Nicola what the hype seat is or what her expectations are or why she's sitting all the way over there? It's weird. It is weird. I don't have a computer and everyone else does. That's fine. You've got a coffee cup.

What's in that? Is it just straight vodka in a coffee cup? No, I went to Pratt and I got a double Americano. Okay. Because I wanted to be jazzed. Too much story. You just had sick coffee. I like jazzed though as opposed to jacked.

Yeah. Yeah. A little mellow. Yeah. I mean, you have Red Bull. That's jacked. I'm jazzed. I'm getting jacked.

Yeah. Letting that one go. Jack versus jazz. Okay. So here's the function of the hype scene. So Sam usually sits over there. And as we talk about the news and things that are happening, Sam's job is to like keep it real and rate things on a hype level of one to ten. Okay.

So I say like, hey, we're talking about Apple Music. Well, we'll just practice. Okay. So like Drake, hype check Drake. Eight. There you go. Wait. And then if you want.

What? Wait, is it eight? Is it eight? Is it a number scale? It's supposed to, it's Sam. Both be a formula. Sam. I thought it was like over, like overhyped or.

No, it was, it was originally supposed to be a number. Right. So I would say Sam, continuing with our jazz theme, Sam is more of a free form hype checker. Right? Like there's an underlying structure that we all understand. But yeah, Sam is hype scatting all over the way. So you feel free.

I'm just going to say hype check this or that. Okay. And then you kind of respond. The way it feels right. The way it feels great. the way it feels right. And then if you want to just sort of like get in the mix, otherwise, Sam knows no boundaries.

So you can just do that as well. So sometimes called upon other times interjecting. Yes. That's the hype seat desk? Yeah. Sometimes called upon other times interjecting. Is it the hype seat? It's the hype seat, which is at the hype desk where her swagesty sits.

Uh-huh. Okay. Oh, okay. Good. It is a deeply confusing role. Yeah. Yeah. But just do you.

All right. Sounds good. I'm excited for this. Okay. So here's what happened. We were planning on just talking about WWDC, but we knew that there was an Oculus event happening. And we're like, oh, well, it's an Oculus event. They're probably going to do all their big stuff at E3.

And, you know, Oculus, they always sort of like oversell. Like, like, we weren't expecting it to be huge. But instead, what has happened in the past hour as we're recording this is Oculus has just unveiled a massive slew of hardware and news. Basically everything that anybody's been waiting for. Yeah, the stuff we've been waiting for for over two years. They're just like, oh, yeah, here it is. It's like, what? Is it that everybody just sort of has a white noise reaction to Oculus News now?

It's just like, oh, yeah, they're going to do the same thing that they've been shown at every other show or. Yeah, and I mean, you know, there's much people there. So, like, we've got everybody on it. We're covering it. Casey Newton is there. He's putting up hands-on photos with the new hardware right now. So it's very exciting, but it also has sort of, you know, discombobulated me a little bit because I was like, I'm going to talk about. Watch OS 2.0.

and instead it's like Oculus happening. Well, it's a huge, like they showed off their new controller. They've got the new thing. There's got an Xbox thing. It's, I think we're just so used to Oculus doing iterative. Right. Right. Here's the thing.

Here's the thing again with like dots glued on it so another computer can look at you. Well, we're very comfortable right now covering Oculus as maybe a thing that is continually in development. Like instead of like thinking about a year from now, oh, we're going to be actually playing games on it or watching movies or whatever. Right. Like, which is exciting. All right.

So just like, here's the thing. Cool, what's Oculus? There you go. Good question. So, Oculus is a VR headset. It's a company that... VR stands for virtual reality. Yes.

And we were very excited about them a couple years ago because they were this little scrappy little company. And they got bought by Facebook. And we've been waiting for them to release their consumer product ever since then. And they have just now today basically announced and shown everything that they're doing, answering a whole lot of questions that we had about how it was. going to work for regular people. Have you done any VR stuff at any events you've gone to?

Has anybody ever put the thing on you? No. Because it is actually... Is there fashion VR? Not yet. Kim Kardashian-Hawood. Oh, my God. The fully immersive experience.

I just made her more billions. Oh, my God. I mean, that stuff is coming. Like, every event that we go to, particularly entertainment-related events, there's some Oculus thing happening. It's like, some beer company is like, jack it up, and then they put a thing on you.

And then you like, And then you live a different life, right? Yeah. And it's just everywhere right now. And it's just crazy because it hasn't crossed over in a fashion. I thought that fashion events were like, like, ostentatious and like over the top and whatever. And then I went to some tech events. And I just was like, whoa. Wait, really?

Yeah. When I went to South by Southwest Interactive, my mind was blown. Oh, that was a relatively tame brand activation. Oh, last year. Oh, last year. Not the most reasoned one before. Okay. Yeah.

It made fashion week look like slums just like garbage. slums of terrible nail polish giveaways. Well, they just don't serve food. There's no barbecue at Fashion Week because fashion week, right? There's food. There's food. But it just like, no, my mind was really, it was something else. Wait, what is a fashion event usually like? You get there, there's like a handsome man.

He has a little platter on it. It's probably champagne. It's already better than CES. And like a water, water with like limes in it. Yeah. And he's tall. good looking and you're like, oh no, I don't want anything. Okay. And then you, wait, hold on. Do you, do you want to switch jobs for a week? I think we just learned way more about like your basic

interaction with like handsome men and champagne than fashion events. Okay, paid beautiful people. It's very weird because it's like, it's like, it's like, oh, you're paid to be here because you're good looking and like, I don't want to interact with you because like, I feel bad that you have to be here because you're good looking, but that's your job. But like, you probably hate me. So those people exist, I feel like, at tech events or at E3. They're just not men. Right. It's just the other way.

Yeah. And it's probably, yeah, there's probably less girls being like, no, I'm fine. No, there's just me just drinking all the champagne. Just being like, you stay right here. So then you walk in and then there's usually like, there's probably like a Bosco photo booth at something. Like there's some where to take your picture and hashtag it of yourself. There's probably like lots of very small bits of food. like fancy food in like really tiny.

But what happens? You look at stuff. Right. It's pretty much it. Like it's whatever the stuff is. What do you clap for? Oh, I'm thinking like a fashion event versus like a show.

Oh, okay. Like a show. No, no, no. Show is like, I mean, it really depends. It runs the gamut. But yeah, you walk in, you sit down. You wait 30 minutes after it was supposed to start for it to start. It happens.

It's eight minutes. Are they beautiful people? Not just right. Because our listeners don't know any of this, right? Yeah. A tech event like Oculus is like an elaborately staged production with people holding like headsets you wear in your face and telling you that the future will be different now. Yeah. No, I mean the future will be different now this dress.

Like you know what I mean? And then and then it's over and then you everyone leaves and no one talks and you leave. This just sounded like really bad sex. Like you show up, you wait, it's eight minutes and then no one talks. So better than a tech event? I think that's fair to. I think that's a fair. And a man with champagne.

Don't forget. A handsome man with Shain is there to make you feel awkward on your way in and out the door. That's what you want from a sexual encounter. Anyway. This is prime brunch cast material. This is what the listeners are here for. Do you want to talk about the virtual reality headset some more data? I mean, I did, but now I can't think about the man with the Shain.

I want to talk about virtual reality and maybe not fashion, but lifestyle. Because actually, speaking of Kim Kardashian, Google recently, announced this sort of kit of basically having 16, I think, Gopros. Yeah. That you can, so you, anybody can kind of be a virtual reality cast or through their system, cardboard.

And I mean, that feels like the next kind of, um, uh, reality star to me is like, oh, I can go and plug in and be Kim Kardashian for the day. Oh,

that would be wild. That's, I mean, that sounds really interesting. Wait, don't you want to watch those people though? We had this big conversation. So, so just the basics of the Oculus stuff that's being announced right now.

Yeah. They're showing off the final hardware. There's going to be a camera that sits on your desk. It ships crazy with an Xbox One game pad, and everyone has thought. Yeah, it ships the Xbox One game pad. It still requires a PC, but you can stream Xbox One games to it, which means that that could be a potentially big deal. So you buy the kit, you get to stream Xbox One games.

And then the last thing, the thing that we've been waiting forever for is they shipped a thing that they're calling Oculus Touch, which are these insane bracelet-looking little controllers that detect motion. that you can use in your hand so you can actually control stuff in VR. Right. It's like they look completely nuts. And there's this weird. There's a bunch of games coming to.

And there's Xbox stuff. You know, like demo games. Yep. And so that wouldn't be in virtual. That wouldn't be 360, right? That would just be like a big screen, like a screen that would take up like IMAX or something. I imagine it could be both. Okay.

But more likely the actual VR games will just run on the PC. Because the way that the way, I'm assuming that the way it works is you can stream Xbox one games to your PC now and play them on your PC, like if you were like hanging on in your bedroom or something. And presumably like they're using that mechanism to get it to the Oculus Rift. I'm guessing. And so like there's kind of no point to put VR on the Xbox one if it needs the PC as an intermediary anyway.

But regardless, the fact that, but they could maybe, or like you could buy an Xbox one game that would come with the VR version for free or something. Right. So like Microsoft has now has the only company with like an AR solution. augmented reality solution in hollins is actually interesting it's just a controller it just runs on a PC it's just a controller it's there's no Xbox near it right but what I'm like they've got a partnership now with Oculus such that like this is the VR thing that you use with Microsoft stuff that makes sense and Microsoft has a huge investment in Facebook which owns like all of the

there's an Illuminati conspiracy theory here yeah which is actually not a conspiracy theory it's literally just that Microsoft owns a big chunk of Facebook which runs Oculus how big is that is it that big a chunk is it that big a chunk? It seems like we every Everybody brings it up all the time, and I don't think it's that much. I don't know. All right. Whatever. Anyway, a bunch of stuff.

Wait, so this is, so it goes through, wait, so it goes through Xbox Live. Wait, so does that mean this is why I was asking? No, it's just a controller. Yeah. Oh, how come, I feel like I saw it. I'm confused about the change of command here. Right. So Oculus runs on a PC.

Uh-huh. You can pair an Xbox controller to a PC. Right. So that's that, that whole thing. And then they have this new interface, which is a portal that lets you like, buying demo games, which looks very much like across, to my eyes, across between Steam and the Xbox. Yeah. Which is probably where all the confusion is coming in.

Yeah. Okay. And it's like a 2D. Anyway, so this is like the first complete VR solution. You buy a bunch of stuff. You put on the headset and you enter a different world and you leave your body behind. Yep. And so you'll be able to do that in the first half of next year.

And then, or the first, I think it's maybe in first quarter. And then you'll be able to buy these new touch controllers in the first half of next year. Right. That seems like hype check high. Right. Yeah. Very high. You got it.

Hype check Oculus, everything we just talked about. I think it's very high. Right. It sounds like there's new worlds. Yeah. They're not real ones, but they're there. They are. Virtual world.

Virtual world. There's something about Facebook and money and also Microsoft. Microsoft. Microsoft. It's a hype check Microsoft in your life. What was the last Microsoft product that you use? I don't know. Right.

Is it none? Have you used Sky recently? No. What do you write on? Uh, chorus. Wow. Right answer. Right.

On brand. Hype check our companies for proprietary CMS. So here's why I'm excited about the Xbox stuff, even though it's not technically VR, because someone just tweeted this at me. I have a TV that is small. It's like 46 inches. Yeah. And like, I want a new TV.

but you know what I don't need to do anymore? I could just use this, and I will have a giant screen. I have a giant screen for all my video games from now on. Okay, this is my fear right now, because immediately... Are we going to share fears? I'm so...

I don't want to trust to anybody. I want to hear Emily's fear. Well, no, but for some reason, this announcement, which is like, you know, finally, Oculus being this real thing that we're going to be able to buy, and it's like all going to be there. For some reason, this made me take a giant step back

to, like, a much more rudimentary. you use for Oculus, which would be, yes, like, not even doing games watching Netflix. Right. On, um, essentially, like, the best, uh, in the best theater, like, THX, Black Box Theater you could get, except it's all here. And then I immediately think about getting stabbed while I'm watching. Oh, my God. Right.

You know, like, I mean, it's, it's fine if you're in a theater because you're actually in a place, you can see if somebody's going to come up and try to get it. Wow. I'm picturing that, like, you know. I checked everybody one at a time. I would like Emily to first complete her murder fantasy. It's not a fantasy. It's a nightmare. No, I mean like, I mean. Well, you haven't heard my new series, Fear Fantasy. It's a new fever bus. No, I mean, like if I'm in my apartment, I'm usually not afraid of that kind of thing. But for some reason, if I was, if I was, if I had, you know, Bose, whatever, sound canceling headphones and, and, uh,

completely face covering mask showing a movie, I would get nervous about all the things I couldn't see right then. I mean, I'd have to get like a giant padlock from my house. I have a sleep mask so I know how it is. And I live alone. Is that the sleep mask? Okay.

I'm just going to, and I hate to just like, I hate to like aggressively correct you. But a sleep mask is less isolating than a noise canceled virtual reality environment. Right there. I promise you. I'll drop it. onwards.

Wait, what do you fear? in general? Yeah, just throw it out there. Oh, man. I mean, what isn't there to fear? I don't know. That's like. So we have been talking about, oh, by the way, there is this thing.

The thing that you're talking about, there's another product called the Avagon Cliff, which is basically a huge set of headphones with a visor that flips down and beams 100 inch screen directly into your retinas, which is, it's like a laser display. It's wild. Wow. It's very cool. They're working on that. So that's just the big display.

And then the other thing they're doing is Oculus is partnering with airlines so that you, when you sit in, like, coach, you can, like, put this thing on and just be in a different world. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That seems great. That is my fear. Like, my fear is that I'll be in the noise canceled environment, like, look in at stuff. Like, I'm in an aquarium. And the plane is, like, just, like, fucking crashing. You'd be great if that's your last memory.

And I was like, oh, we're swimming with fishes in an aquarium. And then it was over. Does it say a lot about me that I went instantly to I'm in an aquarium? The idea of letting an airline control what I see in a VR headset is terrifying. I still get incredibly livid at the displays on the back seats and I keep turning them off, but they turn on and show me ads all the time. But in a VR environment, like, we've gone and tried these like branded activation experiences in VR, but like you choose to do that. But like if VR becomes the way that we interact with screens, like that's a different kind of ad that I am not looking forward to them. It's like.

Yeah. Right. Well, they're not like drugging you to vomit every time they see you violence. Clamping your eyes open and making you watch branded content. That is the future of our business. Or that Black Mirror episode. Would you ever sit in a room? So you've never worn one of your headsets. You have to imagine this.

Would you ever sit in a room with another person and wear this headset? Because that's like, that's the whole Indeeder's argument, right? Instead of buying a big TV, everyone's just going to sit around together in these like virtual worlds. Oh, you assume I have people that want to watch TV with. You're watching the same thing, but you're watching it on. I mean, I think that, like, you might want to be precious about, like, how people are, like, in rooms together, but everyone is distracting themselves all the time. Right. So, I don't think that it would take, like, more than, like, a couple of experiences to be like, yeah, I guess we just sit here with these things on now.

That's so weird. I don't, no, I think that's the thing about film is that so few people watch TV or watch movies without doing something else. Right, yeah. Except if you're like, and that's, like, why the... Oh, yeah, that could see. super boring to watch a bad Netflix show, but in VR, there's nothing else you talk in it. You know, I have a theory that Netflix shows are designed to let you check your phone. That's why they're so boring in the middle.

Like, Daredevil is just like endless sequences of brooding and it's like, yep, that's when I look at Twitter. Yeah. This is the genius behind it, them doing the Xbox, because the Xbox looks to, like, snap a game of threes on the side of your screen. But you could play it. You can, never mind. I hear what you're saying. Is there going to be a thing where you can watch TV in a virtual world, but the

screen is a part of the virtual world so you can sit with your friends like virtual yeah well virtual avatars of your friends in a virtual space watching a fake TV screen so that you guys can all be watching your shows together that is that's the next generation of xbox i've already had that right where you would like watch netflix all together with your friends yeah yeah yeah this is just one terrifying step forward depressing step forward i already feel bad like like Xbox live playing games with like a headset on with like other fake people i'm always like why don't i just have friends that come to my house. And then the answer is because I'm like in my 30s.

So you think about the big questions. Yeah, that's when I'm most alone when I'm gaming with other people on the internet. Yeah, it sounds dark. Yeah. Anyway, I've got to read an ad now. So just everybody, everybody hold your horses and then we have to talk about Apple. Did you do any research on Apple music? I did.

I'm going to tease the next segment. Last night I emailed Nicola and I said, hey, I want you to come on the verge cast. I would say, 9.21 p.m. Yeah, it was late. It was late. And she wrote back to me, okay, great. What is Apple Music? Googling it now, which is amazing.

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Cool. I have a notably different ad read voice. Yeah. It felt like it just felt like serial. Yeah. Okay. Oh, yeah, I know. It's like real pro in here.

Except for that. You just ran ahead for another company. That's how it works. I know. They're supposed to pay us. I don't know. Now the Mail Kemp girl owes me 20 bucks. That would be awful.

That poor girl, it's her job. Just deliver huge checks to people. That's a real sad story about Mail Kemp. All right. So the Apple worldwide developer conference. Okay. So you didn't. That is what WWDC stands for.

So if you don't, Why would our audience know this? So there's like a huge traffic dashboard that you can access at our company. Did you look at dashboard earlier this week? Did you see like we had a big spike on, was it Monday? Monday. Yeah, should. I mean, I believe you.

I just wasn't, didn't have my eyes out for it. There's an Apple event on Monday, a huge developer conference. And this is. Oh, I know because on Slack every verge friend was like, I can't talk. I was like, hey, it's Monday. We want to get coffee. We started a new reporter on Monday.

We actually have a bad history of starting people at the worst. times. Oh, yeah. So we started Emily at CES. I don't think she's forgiven me. Like, it's still like every night and again, I'm like, oh, I'm having a really pleasant conversation with Emily. And I'm like, what is that note of just complete disdain? And it's like, oh, Emily started at CES. I still have like flashing strobelights from, I don't know, a Sony keynote or something. Oh, I'm like the story for a different day. We started Chris Plant on an Apple Day. Still, don't think he's ever forgiven me. And now we have a new reporter, Jameson, Cox. who's great, and it's already written four stories.

Yay, Jameson. He's going to be awesome. But he started on Apple Day as well. And at one point, I think he said it to everybody and he's like, this is like being in a NASA control room. Like nobody would talk to him. Everyone's just like sit down, be quiet, don't break anything. It's like, well, it's a good day to watch things. It's just like, I'm not sure how easily you're going to be able to like follow it because it goes by so quickly.

Yeah, it's wild. Anyway, so Deeter and I were there at Apple with Casey and a couple of video friends. they announced what a new version of OS 10 a new version of iOS 9 they purchased Microsoft nope they couldn't buy that one I was just seeing I could throw that one I hate you I was you were just you were just like looking at the window anyway OS 10 OS 9 iOS 9 watch OS 2 the new version of the thing for the watch they changed the spelling of the watch OS which is like a big deal what you mean lowercase W capital oh capital S that's one word.

Yeah. Which gives me some really deep web OS feels. It's called watch us. That's cool. So they did that and then they announced Apple Music and Drake was on stage and then the weekend played. So it was like this whole crazy thing.

The new version of OS10, the operating system that runs almost every computer at this company is called OS10 El Capitan. Too much. Yes. A little too much. But they're very proud of it. It sounds like a Mexican restaurant that doesn't have good Mexican Well, it's a name of Disney's Theater on Hollywood.

Well, you killed Dieter, so there's that. Actually, let me tell you about Alcapian. No. It's the name of the Disney's Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, like where they premiere all the Pixar movies. Oh, yeah. It's like some kind of some synergy. Yeah, because they, you know, Steve Jobs used to be the biggest showholder of Disney.

I'm sure it's a tribute. Anyway, so they named it that. they spent basically no time talking about it. They're like, you've had some new features, it goes a little bit faster, and you can move windows around. You want to hear my deeply nerdy thing about El Capiton? So they can move windows around on a new way

and do split screen, whatever. The deeply nerdy thing about it is they've got this thing called metal, which is like you code to the metal, you code closer to the metal. What it means is that they can do graphics better, basically. And that they're bringing it to the Mac and they're running all of their window stuff through this so that all the graphics stuff that a Mac has to do,

it's way more efficient. My secret dream hope is that all the, you know, 40% faster, 2x app launches, previews open this much faster, all that stuff that they did. Yeah. If they can run more graphics through metal, then maybe, maybe, maybe the new MacBook

might feel way faster and it could be my next computer. That thing is, I know you want that computer. I want it to do, but it's not going to happen for you. Yeah. One time my dad got a special graphics card. so I could play The Sims. Yeah. So I know about slow loading graphics.

There you go. Right. You're into it. Let me ask you a question. How often do you consider the operating system on your laptop? I mean, what do you mean? You have a macro care, right? Yeah.

Do you like when you... Well, everybody had to think about it when the switch to Yosemite, I feel like. That was like when it was very evident what an operating system is. Right, because everything, it looks different. Yeah. Right. This one's a new font now, too. It draws attention to it.

No way. Called San Francisco. What? This is my ongoing. Emily's making the worst face. This is my ongoing theory that the only time regular people know when technology is changing

is when it looks different, which is how they, which is how they sold the iPod. Every year of the iPod would just look arbitrarily different. Especially the nano or the mini. Yeah, the nano is their bestseller. Every year Steve Jobs was like, this year we've made it, fatter.

And the next year we've like, we screwed that up real bad. Thinner is the way to go. And like everyone would buy a new iPod. Like that was how like family members who like kind of didn't like you but knew they had to buy you a present that showed their affection for you yeah so like an iPod Nano it cost 150 dollars here it is please please don't talk to me for a year yeah good what's app doesn't exist we can't bother each other that was my youth and now

what's app is like that's how they show up yeah the what's app tie is interesting well do you do you have like family WhatsApp groups so i have like i don't know i only have one friend that i talked to on what's up so i there's like a huge i have a huge family WhatsApp because it's international. Right, right. Yeah. And it's just like, it's just banging away all down. Oh, man.

And I feel really guilty because I'm like, I don't, I just, can we get back to, can we go back to the place where we were just buying each other iPods? My family standardized on I message, which is another reason that I'm basically tied to it. Are you watching your watch? I'm going to send my heartbeat to my mother right now. Hey, so it's been like here to. So Nicola, you did a bunch of watch coverage. Barbone, you're about to get a heartbeat.

You got to, just stop it. This is the second time I've seen one. since then. Since all the coverage you didn't get one. You weren't convinced to get one. No. Have you seen anybody in the fashion world wearing one? No.

But I did see someone. I saw a JetBlue employee wearing one. There you go. He worked at the desk at the airport. Yeah. In Burlington. Okay. We're deep in the weeds here.

Well, it says stuff about who's buying it. Yeah. JetBlue employees in Burlington. Burlington. Burlington, Wisconsin. No, Burlington. Vermont. Oh, wow.

Thus ends our conversation of El Capitan. So the Apple Watch is over. Yeah, I check the Apple Watch. Oh, yeah. Oh, I mean, dead in the water. Wow. Wow. I mean, but we know this.

This is a common known thing, no? I know this is a gut thing. And it's mostly a style thing because any time I see somebody wearing one, I'm like, that person. Sorry, not including Dieter. I'm wearing one too, but mine is dead. This is how I've chosen to wear mine. This is a box.

You just have a corpse on your wrist. Yeah. Well, it's either dead or I've left it in the pairing screen. which I refer to as Lagerfelding. Because Carl Lagerfeld has an Apple Watch, but he's never paired it with his phone. So every photo of it is just the pairing screen. That's so funny.

Wow. It's the best. Lagerfelding. I Lagerfeld my watch. That's good. Yeah. You guys are really making me feel bad about wearing a smart watch right now. No, it's fine.

You're great. Oh, my God. That was worse than what I was going to say. That was just like the most Gatroner-A-Sty thing I've ever heard. I'm going to do we do we stock poison in the kitchen because you know I got to go do a thing you're great yeah that's like the equivalent of like okay so let me ask you I'm just we're moving on Dieter I love you and I'm I apologize for our previous interaction uh do you upgrade your do you upgrade your phone software every year do you buy any phone over here no okay but do you upgrade your

software every year yeah yeah I feel like that is that's like a but I have a lot of friends that are terrible about it and it's so frustrating why Because they, then they get in that thing where, like, they haven't done it in years, and then they try to do one thing and they can't do it. And then their computer needs it. And then they, like, the phone needs it. And then it's this whole afternoon and their sister has to help them. And then they never have any information that they ever used to have before because they waited too long.

I hate that. Yeah. And my friends know that I hate that. That's my parents. Yeah. Well, it should be parents. It shouldn't be 25-year-old girls. One time it got so bad for my parents that to upgrade my mother's phone, just to go from, like, Iowa.

was four to five, I had to go and buy her a new iMac. Like, I don't know how I felt. She fell so far down the hole that I was like, to get this done, I'm going to go and buy you a new computer. The worst is when like an iTunes update comes into place. It's just like, fuck, this is going to be forever. Like, this is just, like, I thought I was leaving the house. I'm not leaving.

Yeah. Oh, this happens. So you go home and you have to like fix everything at home. Is this a thing for you? This is. Well, I mean, I've learned enough now to always, like, the maintenance updates, just to keep it going just so that you don't ever get to the point of, like, the many updates, like the domino effect updates where you have to, like, oh, to get the phone to do the thing,

I have to get the iTunes to do the thing, which means they have to ask the computer to do the thing, et cetera. Yeah, no, it's an endless chain. So the reason I ask is iOS 9 came out. And iOS 9, did it, is it a big one in your estimation? No. I feel like the first half of this Apple keynote was, like, really minor updates to Apple software. Like, everything is going to get a little bit better. IOS 9 is like a little bit,

they changed the font again. Yeah. The iPad can now do two apps at once. Like that's all cool. But like the phone, I think the phone experience will remain substantially similar. Yeah. So you can do split screen on the iPad.

They're changing past book to wallet. They've got transit directions and maps. So those are all things. But the big stuff with it, and they're like fixing bugs, which hopefully. Transit directions in maps? Yeah. Yeah.

That's tight. I give that a hype level, medium high. Medium high. Yeah. Like a six. on the burner? Like, not room temperature. Would it make you switch back to Apple Maps instead of Google Maps?

I mean, remains to be seen so doubtful, but remains to be seen. They claim that their transit directions are special because they know the size of subway stations and they can give you better walking directions because they know that they're huge. You don't want to walk across all the subway station. I mean, that's real. That would be cool. Yeah. But the big thing is they've got a new search interface and they have a new, like, series intelligence now.

and so she can suggest stuff to you, kind of like Google Now. And then like when you swipe over to the search thing, it shows your recent friends and it shows you apps you might want to use. And it shows you stuff. Do you use Spotlighting Phone? Mm-hmm. Okay. So when you pull that down, it's supposed to like guess what you might be searching for. But now it's, do you use Apple mail on your phone?

Just the regular mail that's on there? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You're one of like the few and the Prad. No, no, no, no. It's the switch. Just switched.

It's the, everybody uses it. I think it's such hotline. I have mail outlook and Gmail on my phone for different. different scenarios because not one of them does all the things. Wow. Yeah. Which one do you go to though for the most part to like look at your mail? If I can get to Gmail because I'm above ground, I'm not on the subway, I'll go there. Okay. And then otherwise you use. But if I'm on the subway, outlook's pretty good. But then sometimes I just got to see it all. Yeah. So I got to go classic.

Oh man. I can't. I, that thing is why did you switch? Because it's garbage. Yeah, because it's garbage. And because I needed alerts, I needed to just have an alert every time I got mail. like in real time. Yeah. I can't do that. So I would use mail if they gave me a single pain view of email threats.

Right. So then the big thing, the features, the actual features are like series is going to get smarter and such adjusting stuff to you. But then the big thing that they kept on harping on

over and over and over again was that all of this intelligence, all this like smart, predictive AI stuff happens on your phone and not in the cloud like it does with Google and that they're protecting your privacy.

Yeah. And Apple basically straight up was like Google is evil because they're stealing your privacy to sell you ads. And they were like every single feature they announced, they put up another screen that was like, this isn't tied to your Apple ID, we don't know who you are, it's all smart, you're not the product,

we're not advertising, like, banging away at that theme, which if you like look around sort of like the Apple Web, the anti-Google feeling is strong. The slide that I wanted to bring up, they brought up the similar slides for in a couple different spots, and I can't find it right now. I've got to go hunt through our live blog. So the whole thing is that you have to use all their,

apps. Like, you have to use their mail app because it has to download all of your mail and read it for you on the phone so it can be smarter, which is crazy to me. Wait, what's it going to do with reading my mail? It's going to, like, if somebody sends you like, hey, let's meet at 3 p.m. It'll automatically make a little calendar invite for you. Yeah, you can tap on it to get it. But that's horrifying if you have jobs like we do where you get a lot of invitations to things there's no way you're going to go to.

Right. Well, they don't automatically, well, they show up as like gray boxes on your calendar. It's still hell. It's going to be like gray box. It's going to look like a, it's going to look like a skyline. line. Yeah. No,

my, I believe that, like, every Apple product right now reflects a crazy Apple meeting culture that I don't understand. Yeah.

Right. Like, the Apple Watch, like, it beeps at you every hour to stand up. And, like, if you did that anywhere,

anywhere, like, in any responsible, like, Dieter has to stand up now. In any responsible situation, like, that's crazy.

Yeah. You sit down, Deter. Well, yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it free,

it assumes, I think that this is something that people, maybe people talk about this in other spheres that I'm just not aware of it. But like I feel like so much of so many innovations about like calendars and mail and how all this stuff works together and stuff really assumes a very certain kind of non-working class lifestyle. Right. Like, you know, or you just work on the Apple campus or something like that. So I just think the idea that like I bet in Apple it's really rude to ask somebody for a meeting unless you're going to take it. Right. That's like a corporate culture.

You can arrange a set of people in such a way and say these are our expectations. Like if I send you an email that says, hey, does three o'clock work? Like, we're probably going to have a meeting. But here, there's like 500 people who want my time at any minute of the day and they're asking me questions about when my time is free. And just overloading my calendar with like. Suggestions. With like questions with like, please, please press yes. It's like, that's terrifying to me.

And then you have to hard know them. Yeah. Decline, decline. Oh, I'm a maybe man. I mean, maybe everybody. I mean, maybe he's definitely move. I think we've all learned something about Deeter's past aggressive calendar skills. Well, you're from Minnesota, right?

Yeah, of course. Yeah, it's like a passive aggressive, maybe decline. Okay, so Apple's slide says that this proactive stuff is anonymous, not associated with an Apple ID, uses a randomized identifier, is not linked to any other Apple services, is not shared with third parties, and that you're in control. Now, part of me wants to be a super conspiracy theorist and talk about how. randomized identifiers are bullshit because it only takes like two or three data points for a company with any data mining capability all to identify you anyway. But we'll set that aside and trust that this actually is... Well, they really mean it.

I mean, they are very... Do you use Iclad, Nicola? Yeah. What do you use I cloud for? What do you mean? All this stuff. What stuff? Describe the stuff.

What are the pieces of I cloud that touch your life every day? I mean, probably photos. Right? No, it's not a key question. Mail. Okay. Yeah. I mean, don't you, can you, how can you not use it?

Do you have to have it, right? I think I only use it. I only use it for music. Right. Wait, maybe I don't use it. I don't know. I don't know. So you've stumbled into like, ICloud, ladies and gentlemen.

Casey had this great line. They had all these like scholarship winners on like on stage, like high fiving. It was like overrun with teens. It was adorable. In case he was like, to get here, the teens had to identify. the difference between iCloud photo stream and iCloud photo library because nobody knows the answer because it's a confusing thing that apple has it's like your phone is constantly telling you that you need it yeah i think i always have to log into stuff with it no my calendar yeah you don't have to you

work here right yeah so you use google calendar i got a personal calendar do you don't use iCal calendar yeah wow wow whoa you don't you can't you're listening to this. Nicola is blushing. You just do that. We hit I don't know. I don't know. Just asking Nicola what she uses ICloud for has caused her a deep and abiding embarrassment.

And I think that is just emblematic of the entire Apple situation. I hate being bad at being millennial. No, I don't, I think that that's good. Well, no, you should know what you put on the cloud and not. But like, I definitely default to know on everything. So I'm pretty sure that none of my photos are. on the cloud. I'm pretty sure that nothing, like my emails is on it. It's just my music because it's a purchase that I made through Apple and it's like I'd like to just have that available.

To have that backed up. Yeah. Right. No, I'm just saying like the Apple going on and on about privacy is great. But if I asked you what Google services you used and Google services are as unified as any set of ICloud services, you would just know the answers. Like, what Google services do you use? Right. They're all branded. They're like we, everybody knows what exercise we're going through, right? And that's the difference. And they're better in many ways. Like all of us in the stream use Google Maps. We have to like go and get it because we know instinctively that it's better than Apple's

map solution. When you have a friend from out of town visit and they don't have it. Oh, yeah. And they're like, how do I do, do, and I'm like, you're going to look on that. No. Or they open like hop stop. Oh, that's rough. Oh, yeah.

Wow. You're done. Nicola, like all of this was in service. Just burning hop stop to the ground. And the show's over. Peace out, Hop Stop. Company's over. All right, I'm going to read...

Here's my big question about iOS 9 and all this that we're talking about. Do you care about your privacy? Man, I got a pretty nihilistic view on it all. Okay. That's why you're here. That's why you're in the fear fantasy seat. I mean, wow. Like, how deep to go on this.

I guess it's one of those, like, I should be more... but like, what do I have to hide? And then also, like, it's all there. Yeah. So, yeah. So you're, you're completely within the norms of 95% of people. So let me ask you a broader question. As an editor of RACT, do you think your audience cares about privacy issues and, like,

computer security? Like, we cover it. And here's what I know. We cover it because we have, like, it's part, it's just part of the fabric of what we cover, right? And we do it. It doesn't, like, get us huge traffic, right? Unless it's, like, ICloud nude hacks. It mostly comes up for us, yeah, for celebrity, nude stuff.

Yeah. Which, whatever. And then for any kind of, like, when a retailer has, like, a credit card. But do people, like, did people stop shopping at Target after all their credit cards got stolen? No. Right. I mean, that's the thing. Like, I saw the CEO of Target at the Code Conference a couple weeks ago.

And literally his, like, response to what are you doing about your terrible security practices was like, well, I'm the new CEO, so that wasn't my fault. And he's like, but Target's great. And he's like, tap down talking about Target. That's my question. Like Apple's just pounding away at privacy and how Google is like stealing your shit and selling you and you're, you know, if you're not paying for the product, you are the product. That's like the line that they've chosen. Does that resonate with you? Do you think that resonates with your audience? I mean, I think that people care in the way that people are like, I want to buy a made in America, but how much does that cost? No. And like, then they just buy stuff made irresponsibly elsewhere. I feel like it's the same thing about privacy where people are like, I care so much about my privacy. But then like, oh, but I can't do this if I don't say yes. Okay, fine. Fuck it. Like, you. Yeah. By the way, Google's motto used to be don't be evil.

Now it's, okay, fuck it. It's like you're using Hopstop? Poor Hopstop. All right, I'm going to read this ad, and we have to do music for a little bit because it's actually, I think, the most important thing. Look, here's the thing about podcasts. And I think we, through Nicholas Presence here today,

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Yeah. You got it. Good. And also not enough content, which is. It's a real problem in America. You just sign up for the trial. Okay. Just make me the 50 cents.

All right. I heard we were going to talk about Drake. We're going to talk about Drake. So, tell you. I took so many pictures of Drake. I was at a club that Drake was supposed to be at this weekend and he didn't show. Was it the after-guff ball? Yeah. Up and down.

I'm so glad I didn't go to that then. Oh, my God. Okay. But I did get a contact high from Wiz Khalifa. There you. So I still got my story. It's a souvenir. Tell me that story.

Is that the whole story? I mean, how did your story about a JetBlue employee wearing an Apple Watch? have more detail than contact eye up of Wiz Khalifa. Whizhleifa appears with his crew and it was like pretty mellow situation.

And he just like was smoking loud and I was just standing there and then all of a sudden I was like, oh, I'm a little high from your weed, Wiz Khalifa. And it seemed good. Cool.

Did Sam tell you his story that Dead Mouse invited him up to his like private party loft at whatever club he was at after golf ball? Oh. No. No. He's like, he's like, he's like, yeah. I was just sitting there, like, drinking beers.

Yeah. It's like, of course. And Sam's like, it sounds like Dead Mouse was like, come, you got to come back to my house this weekend. And he's like, I can't go to Canada with you, Dead Mouse. Wait, why can't he go to Canada with Dead Mouse? Because he had to go ride a water slide in Kansas City. Sam's one of my favorite cartoons. I love that show.

Yeah. I really love that show. that show. I'm telling you. We got just a show called Top Chef, which is Sam going to restaurants. It's the wave of the future. That's content. Wait, let's talk about Apple Music, though.

Yeah. Do you want to go through it? I'll go through it. So there's the first part of the keynote. It's very tight. It's very granular, very nerdy. It's great. It's like a classic Apple developers cheered for open sourcing a software language.

Like really loudly cheered, right? Like very long a pause. Lawsburg. Which was great. It warmed my heart, right? Like, we're giving knowledge to the world and everyone's happy about it. And then there's like a dead stop. And they're like, we're doing music.

Jimmy I. Yeah, it was one more thing. One more thing. And then everything just went. Yeah. And then they rode that water slide all the way to the bottom of the Drake zone. Can you paint the picture? Like, where is, what city is this in?

What does this? We're in San Francisco in a giant conference hall. Like a giant conference. There's like 5,000 people. There's like 6,000 people. I mean, it's a very nice looking stage. Yeah. They build a whole thing.

It's the same place Google has their event. They literally Google had their event there the week before. Right. So this is like a, it's just a known environment. That's all I can describe it as. Hang on, I'm going to find some pictures of Drake that I took so I can show you. Wait. It's an audio show.

Drake is like a minimal part of it. I feel like we're overselling the Drake. I know. Except his jacket. His jacket was the most important thing that was a little bit. Let me just get through this whole chronology. So they bring out Jimmy Iveen, who founded Beats with Dr. Dre. Jimmy is the guy at Apple, like, running in charge.

Formerly Interscope. I know who that is. Yeah. Well, if you've watched American Idol, you know, that he's the guy who tells you that you have potential, but you haven't connected with the audience yet. Yeah. And he tells a story about, like, for Springsteen.

Yeah. Like, those are, he's produced everybody, but his go-to stories are about Springsteen every time. He produced, like, you two, right? So he's on stage, and he's, I don't know how to describe Jimmy Iveen's character on. stage. He's like Hollywood uncle. Like, yeah. He's like,

well, somebody described him as like the drunk uncle of Apple, but he's not like drunk, he's just like that. He's got that voice. Like, I've been in show business for so long. And this is how you might, like, we're doing something really like, I don't know, he's always like yelling. He seems really mad, but he's, it's just because he's... That picture is painted well.

Yeah. What would happen if I gave Jimmy Ivina Werther's original? So I love Jimmy. So I, I, in my heart, I think he's like a perfect character, but he's constantly overselling like what beats music streaming is because it's his job to like pitch it. But on the back end, he's actually a shark and like controls lots of things. All this reporting, Micah has been doing on music services for us. Like the stories are just there. Like Jimmy's driving Apple. He's driving really hard bargains. He's trying to kill free streaming and Spotify. Like he's he's the guy, right? He's the CEO of inner, the former CEO of like Interscope. Like he is one

of the most powerful men in the music industry who talks like when people are like that's what they want you to think he's they he's a hundred percent they but he's like dray and i we're making headphones like that's like that's his like attitude all the time right uh so he comes out and just delivers this like rambling thing about i don't know music and the whole first half of apple's thing was about how algorithms on your phone are going to like improve your life yeah we're going to read your email and put up some shit for you. We're going to like figure out your transit stuff and help you walk better. Your phone's going to like hit you every hour to make you stand up because we're improving

your life through computer software. And Jimmy's like, algorithms are garbage. Straight up. You want a DJ. Yeah, he's like, you want a human person telling you what to listen to. He had this whole riff about how the most important song is not the song you're listening to, but the song that comes next because when you're at the gym, you want to stay pumped up. And then he gave this incredible speech to the Wall Street Journal about

how you, if you were listening to Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel came on, that's because the computer doesn't know that you don't like Simon and Garfun. Like, crazy. Oh, I know. If you say thumbs up to one Beyonce song, you are chained to Beyonce for the rest of that, like, playlist, radio, whatever it might be.

Right, so they've solved your problem there. So then... Sometimes it's just the wrong bay at the wrong time. So then Jimmy leaves a stage, and AdEQ comes on and gives just a completely, I would say, just messy, bananas demo. He did some like,

incredible awkward dad dancing in the middle of it. Yeah, he's like, I love Latin music and then just broke it down. The Latin music, I would say it was hype. Also, in this venue,

this huge 6,000 person thing, they had tuned the speakers so that people speaking sounded awful, but music, like, fired kick drums into your chest, like bullets. So, like, they,

like, right before they, what were they playing right before they started? I think they were playing a Drake, song. And it was just like, no, no, it was uptown funk. That's what it was. Yeah, it was a song that played right before, the whole thing started was uptown funk. And it was like, so loud that people were painfully dancing in reaction to it. It's like,

they had no choice. Like their bodies were just like molested by wrong songs. I was amazing. So anyway, so the music sounds amazing, right? It's like super loud and super crisp. And then Eddie's talking and it sounds really, it's like, I think it's just a balance. Like, you can pick one of the other. So, you know, so. He's like banging out of this music. The demos look bananas. They stole this entire screen from beats. Right.

Where it's like circles and you have to like pick like it. What did Casey call it? It's like Diet Coke on a screen. It's just like endless red circles and you like hold them to tell them how much you like pit bull. Yeah. There used to be there. Man, I wish I could remember. There used to be this site like in 2002 or 2003.

I remember going to it where you could find artists that way. It was like these little floating bubbles. Yeah. You clicked on one and then it opened up to a number. other web of other things you might like. Was it Last FM? No, no. This was ancient.

Like, I'm trying to even, like, it was something before, you know, Myspace or anything like that. I was a Last FM, Dave Ote. That was, that was where I lived. Too embarrassing for me. I cannot tell people what I'm listening to. I mean, we can do people on Spotify again. I know, I know. You can do that right now.

Anyway, so they did that. And then they were like, and then the third piece. So there's like, the streaming music thing with, you know, like fuck algorithms is basically a thesis statement. then there is Beets 1, which is like Apple Radio. And they kept on saying Beets 1, but it's actually like Apple Radio is the name of the thing. And Beets 1 is the flagship station. Right.

But there's like, there's lots of weird nuance there because Beets 1 is free for everybody everywhere. 24-7. You guys, it's 24-7. Very confusing why Apple thinks other radio stations are not 24-7. And it's got Zane and it's got DJs. But then the rest of it is basically just iTunes Radio rebranded. Yeah. Right.

Which I'm the only person. We've talked about this. I love me some iTunes radio. If you buy the subscription, you don't have ads anymore on iTunes radio. Oh. See, this is the thing. This is everything, every part of my casual listening habits are now coming together into some, a new product I have to pay for. Yeah.

Anyway, so that was the middle bit. And then the last bit was Connect, which is basically a combination of like Instagram and Tumblr for artists on iTunes. Well, it's, it's title. It well title right but title doesn't let you post like song lyrics right but they could they could I mean like like all these services are like vaguely the same yeah it's like it's like it's like it's like it's like it's like it's like tumbler so you can subscribe so that what they showed was Chris Cornell posting lyrics to a new song of his called higher truth which to me is like that is a music experience that I would like to unsubscribe from just in general then they showed like Alabama shakes we're in the studio right like it's basically all the discovery. that you do to be a super fan of an artist. Like you'd follow them on Instagram you'd follow them on Twitter. You'd follow them on Tumblr. And it's all in one place. But it's not

a full, it's like a half social network. So like I can't see who you follow, I don't think. Everything has like hearts and comments and share counts, but only artists can post to it. Well, I feel like the most important element of that is not all of this ancillary, you know, fan material but just like if you like an artist, you will get, if they

release a new song, you will get it first via that if you subscribe to them, which Spotify has now also. You can follow an artist on it. It just doesn't have all that other, all the other doodaws. Right. And then the second half of that, and this is the title piece, is that you can be an unsigned artist. And if they have to vet you, it's not just a free for all. If you get approved, you can be in Connect.

And then they'll be like, look at the huge platform that you have access to. And then to prove that artists could break by access to a social platform, it was time for Drake. First I picked like a completely rando person. I had no idea who's getting picked and promoted him. He's fine. Yeah. They were like, look at this rando and they played a song. And it was like the saddest song in the world.

And I'm like, well, this really brought us down. But why don't we bring us back up with some Drake? And then Drake came out wearing his jacket. Well, what was the jacket? It was a classic Mac logo letter jacket. It was so good. I wanted one. He looked like a five-year-old.

I didn't understand. It was really big. It was large, yes. Although I saw, I will say, I did some like slack searching for like keynote Apple Verge to see what people were saying with the live one. Wait, you guys, hang on. The jacket has a rainbow Apple logo on it. Yeah, that's what you just said.

Where have you been? I've been just. You were there. You were, this is. We're far away. The logo was literally the size of pixel on my screen. This is why I'm better to watch a Super Bowl on TV, then go in person. This is true.

Dieter, whenever I leave an event, I've said this on the show a thousand times. Whenever I leave an event, I have to go rewatch. I have to go rewatch it because live logging completely, you're just not there. I rewatched half of it this morning. Anyway, so Drake is nervous. That's weird. And he delivers this crazy speech about like growing up in Toronto and just like, you know, it happened to me. And now with Apple Music, I hope it can happen to you.

And it was just like he was just nervous and weird. And he posted an Instagram afterwards being like, this is as nervous as I've ever been. Wow. Talking to like 6,000 nerds wearing an Apple logo jacket. It was crazy. And then that was done. They talked about it a little bit more. And they're like, and now Tim Cook, the.

the juxtaposition here was wild Tim Cook was like, and now an artist is going to break a new song and the lights went out and then like red lasers fired from the ground and the weekend just like fired more bass into everybody's souls and it was wild.

And did a song called I can't feel my face which is perfect. It was perfect. And we just sat there. Like we were sitting down, right? Like that's a weird way to... That's really weird. I do not envy artists

who ever have to play that kind of setting like a convention. Finally, the middle of the middle section like understood what they were supposed to do and they stood up and like began swaying yeah but like that's a it's a sex jam like that's what that song is it's like you're probably like white male just like a room of white males it's a drug and sex jam it's like it was great and it sounded amazing right like this thing i'm saying about the speakers is true like it sounded so good and he like completely sold it god bless him but it was just that i've never seen it the only artists that go off in those environments

are like John Mayer plays a blues jam on the acoustic guitar, right? And it's like, that's what you sit down for, right? Yeah. Like you two played at the Apple Watch event and it was just like this is, even this doesn't work. Well, that feels like it's a million years ago now. I mean, even looking at the little promotional videos that they play, they had two different ones they played during it. I mean, they are really, and I think they're good too, especially not the time lapse one,

but the one about like the beats one radio one. Like, it made me think, oh, I'm going to. to actually listen to this. Like, and, you know, the, the, the people that they choose to be in it are diverse and young and doing things like working out and crying. All the times when you listen to the radio. Basically, the only two times you will be listening. Yeah, pretty much, though. And it was, I mean, but it worked. And it was like, okay, they understand, like, this is not, like, oh, hey, dads, you can listen to you too on, on an iTunes radio or something. Like,

It felt way more relevant or competitive, I feel like, than other music stuff they've done in the past. No, I mean, their music stuff has been, so do you, what do you use to listen to music? Spotify. So every week on the show, this is a thing that, this is a responsibility you have. Sam and I argue about Spotify. Oh, cool. Because I use Spotify, but I feel like I'm in a bad relationship with Spotify. I think Spotify's interface is terrible.

And I'm going to move to Apple Music, because it's just the next thing to move to. and this thing that they're doing, which I think is fascinating, where they're taking all of the local MP3s or AACs that you have in your library and just sort of like mixing them into streaming. So there's no barrier between like the streaming service and the stuff you have.

And you can just like add stuff to your collection. It feels like it's on your phone for real. I think that's really smart. That's all I really want it to do. Yeah. And all this other stuff is like they're struggling to differentiate themselves against Spotify, right? It really sounds like with all these new streaming services.

it's kind of like when you want to go buy something simple like toothpaste or peanut butter and you get to the aisle and you're like oh no like pick uh but this is the thing about apple music is that you've essentially already have it it's like not this foreignness of something new like title like well at least you're really going deep we got it on the peanut butter thing I'm just saying this is my brain I can't change it for you and me life just because I'm on the verge cat wait so which peanut butter is finally I've been burned in return, return burn from the hype seat. A quick assign a peanut butter to each major, each major, uh, streaming,

streaming service. Oh my God. Oh, my God. Is what? Title, title, is like off. It's like weird. It's too expensive.

Spotify is, whatever title is like, whatever, Gwendoza. Google play music is Peter Pan. Seed butter. Seed butter. Yeah. Spotify is Jif. No, Apple music is Jif.

Apple Music is 100% Skippy. It's just the, it's like the default. It's Skippy. And then Spotify is Jeff. I feel like default is Jeff. Jeff is the default. Yeah, Jeff is the default. I don't know.

No, no, no. No, no. No, no. No, no. No, no. You know what I'm waiting for? I'm waiting for the lore scutters of streaming services. Ardeo, is that annoying hippie peanut butter with the oil on top that you have to start?

It never works. I have that. Smuckers natural. Yeah. That's so sad for everyone involved. Smokers natural is going to... It's not... It's not...

It's a natural at all. Oh! Oh! That's gross. So it's ultra-commercial, but still kind of crunchy. That's smoker's natural. That's fish? Yeah, I got it. Okay.

That makes sense. All right. Well... All of us don't want corn syrup and our peanut butter. Now that we follow down that hole. Wait, but so wait, I want to... But I do want to talk about... I don't know.

I mean, I have a couple things I want to talk about. I want to talk about radio. Yeah. I want to talk about the radio. I want to talk about the radio. I want to talk about the... The concept of the radio, hold on. The concept of the radio, because I do think, so Brian were the thing about kind of this

disconnect between anti-algorism that was within the music part of the keynote and then kind of like everything being automated for you in the first part when everything having to do with iOS and all that. And I do actually, well, I feel like you can't, I kind of thought about this for a long time. I feel like those are two separate discussions. I feel like when you're talking about art and when you're talking about leisure time and stuff, I actually like having curators and I really like somebody telling me what to listen to if I don't know exactly what I want to listen to. And sometimes it's like I want to listen to music.

I don't want silence right now. I want both. I really want a smart algorithm just figure out based on what I listen to what I want. There's just a thing I haven't think about a lot, which is when I was a kid and I listened to radio, that's why I knew so much about artists. Yeah. Right? They would just tell me like, here's a new Nirvana single. Like this one is like, I don't know, Courtney Love and Kirk Cobain just got into a fight and here's heart shaped box.

Like that was a piece of information that I only got from that experience that I would never get just from like a Spotify. That's a really bad example. And I don't know that's the first one came in line, but there it is. Also something you don't get from just doing something like Connect where you pick like, I like that artist. I'm going to learn everything about them. Like you're going to learn about a lot of people you don't like and some people you, I mean, it's idiotic to say this. I mean, this goes without saying. But like that's something I think that's missing though from a lot of.

of the more customizable services that we have now. And not having something like the radio or, you know, just browsing through a record store and picking up something that you wouldn't find normally. Like, finding something that's the equivalent of that, I think, is a really important thing. And I think it's going to, like, I think it's a good idea. Like, I feel like people who have, I don't know, maybe it's more of an LA thing. I feel like people who have, like, serious radio or really into it. Like, I think that there's still, like, a very relevant car people.

Yes. I mean, I listen to the radio all the time, but I don't anymore. But if I was able to stream it or something, like... No, when I moved from Chicago to New York, my radio consumption just plummeted. And in Chicago, I would flip between what's gone now, but I'd flip between Q101 and B96, which was the alternative station and the hip-nice station. And, like, I just bounce back and forth. And then, like, I'd be like, you know what? I'm going to give this shot. And I was like, listen to XRT, which was the call, like, the indie station, which had been completely subsumed by all of the other stations at this point. Yeah. So at one point, like, the XRT was, like, just straight up playing pit bull during one summer. And I said, I don't know what happened to you. It's better now. But I don't listen to any of that stuff anymore. Yeah. Well, and the thing is, and this is, this, I've talked about this on this podcast before, but iTunes Radio, which are they just doing away with I now?

Is I over? Yeah, they're placing with Apple and it makes me really mad because they think it's cool to, like, put the little Apple logo next to the word. Yeah. It's really sad for everyone. Well, I mean, but iTunes Radio or what I guess will now be. beats radio or I'm confused the difference between beats fun radio and apple radio. Beets 1 radio is a station on Apple radio. Got it.

Okay. So Apple radio. So Apple Radio, still iTunes radio, the ease of buying a song that you hear and you like. Yeah. Or even just putting it on your wish list and getting it later is so, like, it goes straight to my brain. Like I buy so, I make so many 99 cent purchases through that. And like more than I probably do just buying whole albums from people.

And so I think that that's actually really devious. and like, but also convenient. Well, and if you pay for the $9.99, you just add to your library. Yeah, yeah, exactly. No, yeah, if you're able to do that, then it's less, it's not putting it on my wish list. It's just like, no, I have that now. Yeah, so the big question I have is what's the relationship between buying music and streaming music going to be? Because artists still try to play the game where you've got to buy it.

You can't stream it on iTunes. Oh, I'm sure Taylor's just going to put out our next album. You can only buy it on iTunes and we're just going to buy it, but it's going to be integrated with the rest of the stream. So you'll be able to hear it on the radio and you want to add your library. Like, nope, this one you actually have to pay for. Or all of the bonus tracks will be only available streaming. Right.

I mean, this gives the industry so many more options to like come out you for money. Right. And that's great. That's actually, I think that's fine. I mean, part of Spotify's problems are so stupidly religious about not letting artists sell things on their platform.

Like, they would just do that and it would be fine. Can I sidebar real quick? Yes. Because you brought up Taylor Swift. This is about, this is meta. We're going to be here.

We're going to be a while. This is meta on Taylor Swift. I check Taylor Swift. Okay. Okay. No, it's fine. That's fine. Everybody's entitled to their opinion.

But I feel like I see people commenting on people talking about Taylor Swift on Virchcast all the time. Like, oh, you guys all love Taylor Swift. Like, why he goes always talking about Taylor Swift? No, Taylor Swift is like a hammer. She's like, she is the easiest thing to go to if you want to talk about a top of their game, A-list pop star that multiple different demographics of people like. That's why we talk about Taylor Swift.

It's not because we're obsessed with Taylor Swift, not all of us. That's all. That's totally true. Yeah, I mean, I got into a little bit of a Twitter discussion of Peter Kafka, who's the wonderful media reporter at Recode. And I was like, because I wrote a piece last week where I was like, we're all locked into these services now. Like you pick Apple music, you're done.

Like you have to use where only where Apple decides Apple music can be is where you can listen to music. And he's like, well, they're all the same. Just like Switch. I'm like, no, because Taylor Swift will be on Apple Music and Jay Z will be on title. And he's like, well, the biggest artists in the world are the biggest exceptions because they get to drive purchases. And that at some point we're going to be in a world where you have to subscribe to three streaming services

to get the three biggest artists in the world. It'll be like cable. It's crazy. Well, can you still just buy the album if it's not stream? Like, okay, so say, so Jay-Z wouldn't be, you couldn't buy a Jay-Z album on iTunes then? We all go to CD stores in the future. If they want to, if title gets enough power,

or they could do that, yeah. Yeah. That would suck then. Right. Because the thing that you could do in that is you pick one and then you buy the albums from the people that you can't get

on your streaming service and that's fine. You buy the albums and then all of a sudden you discover that they are, DRM is back and they won't play in your iTunes. You've got to play them in the title app. See this. Oh, this makes me so.

Or you don't pay Apple or you don't want to pay for music, right? And that's the other choice where you're not paying Apple $10 a month. Yeah, but. Maybe we'll all be so distracted with our new headsets, virtual reality headsets. Music will be over.

No, I mean, that's the thing. Apple music isn't going to be part of Oculus, right? Like, Apple isn't going to build an app for the Oculus platform. Like, they're just not going to, you know, it's, this is why the fragmentation comes in. When you had CDs, MP3s, you could play that stuff anywhere. I would love to be virtually in a music video. Oh, can I? We can just start busting some jams right now and screen screen you write it?

Can we bring up one of the really small things that Jimmy, I have? Avine showed off. We can. No, no. It was at EQ actually. The thing of having Siri integrated with Apple music

and being able to look at songs. That's kind of awesome. That's like Star Trek. Yeah, except you can't do songs and stuff. You can't be like, play me some slow jams. Oh, but I don't know that you ever want to be in a situation where you're commanding a computer to play you slow games.

Siri, not too weird. Gonna get it on. Not too weird. Siri. entertain this man standing by the door with a train of champagne. I can't look at him in the eyes.

It's going to be over in eight minutes. Yeah, exactly. Siri, pull up my over and eight minutes. Eight minute grind jams, please. Eight minutes, don't make it weird. Well, that is clearly the end of us. I want to say one last thing. I hope Connect fails.

Because the last thing I want is for, like, of the five buttons at the bottom of it, there's for you, which is Apple suggesting stuff to you. There's what's new, which is Apple telling you new stuff to buy. There's radio, which is Apple. own music stations playing the music that you should listen to. There's Connect, which is Apple using presumably an algorithm, ooh, bad, to show you stuff that the artists decide to post because they've been approved.

And then the very last tab, by the way, oh, yeah, there's your music. And I hope Connect, like, bombs, because I would, I would like to have most people finding music outside of what Apple tells them to listen to. That's all. It's a beautiful dream that's not going to happen. Oh, God. Unless Emily finally brinkly. finally breaks a band in The Verge like I've been asking her to do for like a month and a half.

You know what that requires? I was thinking about that. You know what that requires people being able to be out late on week nights? That's how you break a band. Interesting. Interesting. All right. I think we all learned a little something about conversations with here at the verge.

And that will be the end of our show. Oh, I've got, you don't know what to do. No. This is a place where I usually. throw to Sam. I'll just, I can do it. So that's the Vergecast.

There's a variety of ways to follow the Verge. You can follow at Verge on Twitter. You can hit Snapchat where the real Verge. We've been doing a lot of cool Periscope stuff lately, so like follow some Periscope.

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Emily also has a hot new podcast. Oh yeah. Yeah. Listen to Verge ESP. It's on iTunes. You can subscribe to it. You can also listen to it on SoundCloud. It is myself and science editor Liz Lapado talking about art and science and interviewing

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I am dying. What's a good question we can ask, the iTunes reviewers this week? I am dying to know what you think the new version of OS10 should have been called instead of El Capiton. I think that's like a, that's it. We should just do that work for Apple at this point. They were going to stick with national parks. They were supposed to stick with parks in California. Well, so Apple has this thing where they, this is like the refinement cycle.

So they did the lion and they did mountain lion, which was like to clean up all the rough edges. And then they did a leopard and they did snow. So now they did a park and then a thing in the park and then it'll probably do another park. I hope. Matt Honan from BuzzFeed really wanted to be called the US10 Frisco, which would have been amazing. Anyway, that's it. That's our show. Please rate us.

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