The Vergecast - Brain gotta get there

Episode Date: January 29, 2016

This week on The Vergecast, Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn are joined by Lauren Goode and Racked style editor Nicola Fumo. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Theverge.com. That's right. It's January 28th. You might notice a different vibe to the show, different energy, different frisson. But that's we're in a different room today. We, no, there's a big anime, F-R-I-S-S-O-N. It's French word. It means excitement.

I think. Or it means like rubbing yourself against stuff. A sudden strong feeling of excitement or fear, a thrill. A thrill. A thrill. You might feel a thrill in the air. today. A frisson.

You learn something every day in the Vergecast. But here is why that you might feel that. We are physically in a different space. Yep. There's a big MMA press conference

at our usual time. So we let the SB Nation people take over our usual studio for that. We're in a different smaller studio. This is actually when we rebooted the Vergecast. This is the studio we started in.

But Nicola is closer to us, physically closer to us. Yeah. This plant, this fake plant encroaches ever closer to our space. Everything's getting a small. And then we're also virtually located because Lauren Good is here.

Hi, guys. Anyway, we're here. Deeter's here, as always. I am always here. And I am your friend, Nealai Patel. I'm just in a mood. It's been a week. It's been a week.

It's been a busy, crazy week. There's news breaking left and right. There's stuff happening. I'm angry about the FCC. That's my favorite thing. It just is. But there's all kinds of stuff. Apple had a week.

Yep. Everybody was doing stuff, run around. It was one of those. Oh, there's huge news to announce, which is that RACT is moving from the 10th floor of our office, the 9th floor of our office to sit next to the verge. It's absolutely huge. Operation Figgerhead, like, that's a move.

Do you know I was offered a few seat options? And I, like, very strategically chose my seat so that I have a view of the entire room from the corner, but not all the way in the corner. But I can see everything that's going on. I know what you picked. Yeah. That's that you pick the power seat.

So somebody walks in and tries to kill you. Someone's like, oh, do you want to sit? You could sit back to back with Dieter Niel. No. I want to sit looking out on everyone. This is a long game. I'd like to gaze upon all of you. The important thing about this move is, you know,

the Virgin video team is sitting out with us now. Ract is coming in. We've got other moves that are happening. For the two years that I lived in New York, the ninth floor was like the bummer floor and the 10th floor was the cool fun floor. We're taking that. Yeah.

Ninth floor. Like, listen up box media, ninth floor forever. Lauren, how are you? It's getting really sad. But we don't have to talk about that now. Lauren, good.

How are your floors? This all makes me very heart sick for New York, guys. So have fun. And we'll just keep on, keeping on in San Francisco with Super Bowl City now having taken over pretty much every area of either office that we work out. Yeah, what's the scene with the Super Bowl stuff?

I know that like all the big tech companies are kind of like actually trying to pay attention to football this year? Yeah, well, commute-wise, it's really not very fun. Part of Market Street has been shut down in other areas. But, yeah, I mean, I guess there are a lot of sponsorships going on. Visa, for example, like in one of the buildings that we work out of, like they've wallpapered the elevators with, like, a visa. Just in a random office building?

And I imagine that it's going to be kind of a boon for companies like Uber and Lyft as well. Yeah. surge pricing is going to be 18x at least. Oh my God. I keep sending Casey the thirstiest pitches I get about the Super Bowl. The last one I got was there was a Playboy party where they're reinventing Playboy with like a hallway that you can walk down. It takes you from the beginning of Playboy to the end of Playboy. And at the end, it's just articles.

They just showed you. Yeah, it's just articles. It's the articles and a tablet with Chrome loaded in private mode. but at the end there with this email there's like a list of like famous people who've been at the party in the past and it was just like the saddest I don't want to call out any famous people but we don't want to hurt their feelings. The funny thing is that the Super Bowl itself is happening about 40 miles south of where a lot of these parties and party tents are being put up right now. Yeah. So it's I kind of imagine like it's going to be this reality check for some people who fly out here and then they're in Santa Clara and they're like, oh, we're in Santa Clara. kind of like Wayne's world, like we're in Delaware.

What does Santa Clara like? It's a lot of corporate office parks, and it's just, it's sunny. It's the hardest Silicon Valley, but it's not a ton going on there, I guess. And there's a dating now. I think people think Silicon Valley is San Francisco and it's like not, right? Like Silicon Valley is terrible office parks. I want to go there. What's send you down there?

Someone take me. Yeah, you can come visit me. That would be great. Silicon Valley, and then we can go around and you can have just a field day critiquing fashion. I did learn how to ride a hoverboard yesterday. That's it. The transformation has begun. Yeah.

Okay, so we've got to get in the news. Yeah. Let's start with Apple, I guess. You've got to start with Apple. I'll put it in the room, and we'll save the FCC for the middle. But Apple had a big money day. Is that what earnings are? No, Apple announced its earnings.

They made more money than any company has made in a quarter in history. Whoa. Made a bunch of money. $18.4 billion, which is bonkers. Even their small businesses are huge. Like, Walt loves to remind me that just the $5 billion they make a quarter on the Mac is enough to put them in, like, the Fortune, like, 115. Like, they're just a huge company.

But the story is not that they made a bunch of money or sold more iPhones. it's that next quarter they're not going to sell more iPhones for the first time ever and their iPad sales are down and the Mac sales are down and they Lauren, did you listen to the call?

Dieter and I are both listening to the call. Are you asking me? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Did you catch the same sense of like, kind of like defensiveness on the call? No, I caught a sense of maybe some intentional negativity

to sort of set expectations. Well, first of all, the first part of it was a lot of macroeconomic talk. And if you don't have a degree in macroeconomics, you may have found it confusing. Not saying that I did or anything. But there's a lot of talk about currencies and softness in China and things like that. And then throughout, even as Apple CEO and Tim Cook was going through some of their great metrics and things that they've sold, it seemed like he was maybe trying to temper some excitement a little bit for the first quarter of the year. That was the sense that I got.

Do you think that they're just done selling more iPhones than ever? Like, is it just flat? I mean, that's the question. It's the only question that math. Wait, how many iPhones did they sell? It was like $75 million? Isn't it 75 million iPhones in a quarter flat, like not bad? Sorry, Lauren.

Oh, no, I was just going to say that that's kind of the ridiculous thing, is that I think expectations were that it was going to be around $75 million, maybe a little over, and it ended up being like 74.8. And so that's why people were bummed out. and it's, like, absurd to think about because that's so many iPhones. But you had a point. I'm sorry. That was my point.

And, well, and... Wait, I have a question. If that's, if this is, like, peak iPhone, um, okay. Yeah. Like, fine. What is this, what this means is that does this mean, does this mean that everyone has an iPhone and, like, everyone has them and, like, there's no one else left to get them? And also people are starting to, like, creep away from the iPhone? Is that what this is?

Apple says that they had more Android switches and ever, and that they do a better job of making iPhone customers, stay iPhone customers and not losing them to Android. I think what it means is that all of the obvious ways that Apple has to expand market share and get more people to buy iPhones, they're starting to run out of those. At some point, there's just like nobody else to buy an iPhone one. Like every person on the planet has an iPhone, they can't sell anymore.

Obviously, we're well short of that. A little bit. But, like, everybody that can afford an iPhone that has, like, good plans in their country, like, it just gets harder the more you sell. Eventually, there's, like, no obvious way to get a whole new set of customers. And everybody was assuming that China was going to be the thing that kept this engine of, like, record huge selling numbers, record growth year over year, quarter over quarter, they just keep on selling more and it never ends.

everybody assumed China was going to just like put that shot in the arm and keep that going. And it seems like, especially because China's economy is apparently not doing all that well, that that's not giving them like their like fifth wind. They're just sort of like they're going to be flat selling more phones than anybody else on the planet by a factor of two or five. Yeah, I mean, they're enormously successful. I think that, this is like my pet theory. But I think that they spent that year or two years, promising big new products because everyone was afraid of this moment. And there was all the doubt around, can they put out a big new product because this moment is coming?

They put out a bunch of new products last year and then this moment came. And I think that that's a bunch of stuff that's all wrapped up into. I think that that's what that's that tone I was hearing was like, we have a bunch of new products. They're going to figure themselves out. We're going to be fine. They were like our services make $31 billion a year all in their own. Yeah, they talk a lot about services. Right, because if you have everybody in the world with an iPhone and they're all

spending some kind of money in Apple. That's like a happy thing. But I was talking to, I was on CNBC yesterday talking about this, and John Ford from CNBC was there, and he was like, there's a big difference between a subscription customer who's like a recurring subscription customer and your base of people

who just have iPhones spending some money sometimes. And like Apple isn't making that distinction. You just checked your smart watch in my face. Yep. Like super in my face. Yep. This is ridiculous. Sorry.

Our time. Our culture is doomed. I saw an Apple watch at a cool bar last night. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Was it like the Burgess Conference room? No, it was...

What was it cool bar? What was it cool bar? Well, it was in Bushwick. I'm not going to reveal my sources. Oh, I see. You don't want people to find you in a cool bar. It's a cool bar because nobody knows about it yet. But I saw one in the wild, because every time I see one in the wild in a cool place,

I'm like, oh, there's one. Yeah. I see them all the time now. I really do. I see them much more often than... I started seeing them more once they went on sale at Best Buy. Yeah. TBQH.

Like as soon as that happened, I started to notice them on people. Yeah, it's like the Galaxy Gear. For there's a minute when, like, everybody had a Galaxy Gear. That is not true. Super true. Not true. Actually, at the Code Conference, Lauren, did I tell you this story? We were probably really busy, like, sneaking around and pretending we didn't know each other at the Code conference.

Because that's when we were, like, Vox is buying Recode. So I was like, who's that? I'd like to work with her someday, but nah, probably not. That was basically how I treated everything. But anyway. Lauren, does this match your memory? It was clandestine. They made me meet them.

Walt and Lauren made me meet them for breakfast, but I had to drive my own car. We couldn't go together because somebody might suspect something. Wow, I love that. That's a fact. Anyhow, but we were at the code conference, and all the parking valets had Galaxy Gears, and they were super into them because they'd run around all day. They'd all gotten them for free with their phones because Samsung was giving them out there. Yeah, I was going to say, did they just get them?

Because buying something and just getting something is different. Yeah. Right. Choosing and being given. Facts from Buma. No, but I mean, look. So what's your big read? My big read, I mean, the big read is if iPhone sales say flat, like I don't, like people are going to freak out about the stock.

But like I don't think it has huge repercussions for the future of Apple, right? Like the iPhone is what it is. It's a known entity. At some point, we know it's going to plateau and that's fine. The bigger question is the black box. Like in order to understand what Apple's like future finances and like business. look like, you need to become a kremlinologist because all of their most interesting products are bundled up in other products. So the iPad Pro is bundled up with the other iPads, which are

selling like garbage. But maybe there'll be an iPad 3 to come soon. The Apple TV and the Apple Watch are also bundled up in other. And so all the stuff that, like, are the big bets for, like, future platforms are things that you can't judge, like, on their own separately from what Apple tells you. You just kind of have to, like, hope you can figure out from analysts what the sales numbers are and how much money they're making off of it. So, like, the story of, like, Apple's quarterly earnings and the record profits or whatever, if that's, like, not going to be, like, crazy rocket chip all the time, like, that doesn't affect the way that tech is in culture. 75 million iPhones and a quarter is a shit ton of iPhones. And that doesn't, like, it doesn't change anything if it doesn't become 80 and 85 and 90. So here's my question.

And I think this is their hardest problem. it's not it's what you're talking about they're the default now right you buy a phone you're buying an iPhone a lot of people if you're going to buy an iPhone I mean they're dominant market share expensive laptops they're they still sell a ton of iPads although not more iPads every year right like they are the default for a lot of people in a weird way what happens when a whole generation of kids grows up and Apple isn't the company that like reinvents things is the upstart but they're the default like how does Apple stay cool in that scenario?

New colors of the Apple watch and the Milanese watch band. Nicola, do you think Apple is like the default or are they like the upstart? I think that, yeah, I think it's people's like default. Right. Isn't that the problem? Like, that's a great business to be in is the default of everything. But like so much of their brand is predicated on being the upstart.

Yeah, and also like if you're the default, then you're not like the cool thing. Because you're the everything. Right. And you can't be the everything and be the cool thing. But you can be the everything and rich. And I think like, is that, I mean, it's just weird because if you look at a really macro level, they've been hedging against it this whole time by hiring all these fashion people and like building these really expensive watches and like trying to cultivate this air of exclusivity

around some of the stuff. Yeah, it's almost like pulling out like micro areas within mass things to make exclusive. Right, it's just like I grew up and Apple was the upstart and being an Apple fan was like the renegade thing to do because Windows was the default thing. Yeah. And then now it's like the iPhone is the default thing. And I'm just, I'm actually really curious. Like that changes their entire aspect. Like they're the, like Steve Jobs got the iTunes music store through the labels because the Mac had no market share.

And he could be like, try this out with me because I want, I want to prove that I. I can change the world with music. But if it fails, it'll only fail on the mark. It only fail on the Mac. I mean, they have 5% market share. So it won't matter. And they're like, yeah, we can do it. And then you're like, change the world.

But now they're the, they're the default. And they're going to the TV companies and saying, give us a deal for the Apple TV. And TV companies are like, no, you're huge. No. Like pay us. Yeah. And it's just the whole thing feels inverted. Like, that is the thing.

They made a bunch of money. They're going to make a bunch of money. The company would find. They have like $216 billion in the bank. Like, they can literally just last. Like, Apple can just ride it out for, like, a million years. And they'll be fine. But it's, like, literally a million years at their rate.

But I don't think they want to just be fine, right? I think they want to continue to be the most important kind of, like, tech company out there. And this shift where suddenly all the people who have iPhones have iPhones, that's the one that changes their place in the culture. At least, I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. Well, like, you wrote the Divergence column where, like, the app on the phone is no longer the thing that, like, changes everything, right? It's only the most exciting thing. So at the same time that everybody who's going to get an iPhone has an iPhone, the stuff that you do with an iPhone has gone from, like, being holy crap.

Hoobers are amazing. Everything's different to, like, we're kind of out of ideas for how to, like, blow up the world with a new app on a phone. And we're going to, like, look at some other stuff. So, like, and then all of Apple's big bets that watch the TV, the iPad Pro from the last year, like none of them like grabbed culture. Yeah, nothing's amazing. And Apple music hasn't grabbed culture.

Beats 1, radio is like, interesting for a while, but I don't know. Like, it's not changing things. And so I don't know if until, until the cars start coming out,

I don't know that we're going to have another like, like huge radical change. And like Apple is going to like slowly make stuff better, slowly like become dominant in one of these other platforms, probably TV, going to get to pretty soon with the SEC. It's exciting. I'm pointing at this guy. Mr. Patel. He's just sitting here quivering.

I can feel the energy radiating off of him how excited it is to talk about TV policy. But I guess if Apple doesn't have another like change the culture revolutionary moment in the next five years, okay. Yeah, that's fine. Like that doesn't, they don't have to be the only company to do that.

is not one of those moments in technology in the next five years and like the radical change unless it's VR, which by the way, Tim Cook says is really interesting. So I think it's VR. To be honest with you,

I think that's the moment. Like I think people in headsets is going to be a thing. Yep. And like that they're not part of that game except for you can buy a plastic use. It's an area of an intense interest. Okay, no, that's not precisely what he said.

He said it's somebody, Gene Monster asked him on a call. Oh, God, can we get Gene Monster? My boy. My boy, Gene. I'm so happy. So there's this analyst named Gene Monster, who,

For 15 years, every time there was an Apple earnings call, he would get, they'd give him a question. And he'd get on and be like, so, how about that Apple TV? You're going to make a TV? Tell me about the TV. Every three months for literally 10 years. It's amazing. So Apple finally, like six months ago, was like, you know, we're not going to do it. Just stop.

Like, we're making this box. This is our bet. And all of a sudden, Gene Munster couldn't ask about TVs anymore. and everybody, I was really sad for. Like they shut Munster down. Yeah, basically. But this quarter, he came and he asked about VR. Right.

And so now he has another thing. He's in the game. That he can ask about every quarter. He found a new. It's great. I like his attitude. Yeah. I mean, he was like, so telling you about that TV.

And he'd be like, no. Persistent. But like, he's an analyst. Like, he controls a lot of money. So he gets to go visit Apple and, like, ask about TV in private. But he also insisted on doing on these calls in public, which is amazing. That's really amazing.

Anyhow. So he asked about VR and Cook's answer was, in terms of VR, I don't think it's a niche. It's really cool and it has some interesting applications. Yeah. But I mean, he's just happy because people are buying cardboards or whatever and sticking out of them. I do think it's, I mean, it's going to be the next thing. I think about it this way. It's like what's going to be in the local news?

Like what tech story is going to hit the local news in Midwest? Like, that's the next thing everyone's going to talk about. And the next thing that's going to hit the local news. local news is Oculus launching and people on headsets in the local news forever. I don't know, Lauren, do you think that Apple can be the cool company even though the iPhone's kind of like the default product and it's what everybody's used to? I actually think it's less of a generational question than it is maybe a geographical one. We know that Apple has been really pushing iPhone in China. And despite the softness, the economic softness there, I think that they're probably still doing an okay job of that. I think that I think that they're probably still doing an okay job of that. I think that, they mentioned in the earnings call yesterday that India is one of the fastest growing countries for them, and it's certainly the fastest growing brick country for them in terms of people buying iPhones there.

So I think it's more, like if Apple is always going to be, if iPhone is always going to be this premium device that people that have a certain amount of disposable income can get, then I think the question is, will they hit that ceiling because it's not actually something that's going to come into? developing, like, I guess, you know, undeveloped markets. Like, if you look at something like Africa, I was just listening to a podcast the other day, someone said that there were going to be more than 900 million phones in Africa by the year 2019. And that's a huge amount of mobile phone consumers. So, like, if Apple's not going to sell iPhone there, for example,

then everyone's saying, well, we talked earlier, can Apple, has iPhone peaked? Then, I mean, I tend to think of something like that rather than, like, oh, does a 16-year-old think iPhone's cool. Right. Yeah. I mean, so if you're not familiar, Brick stands for Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Yeah. And if that's where Apple's future growth is, if that's

really where they live, if that's their home, you might say that Apple is going to become a brick house. Come on, man. Come on, dude. Can we play Brick House? Can we get some brickhouse playing right now?

I don't know. There's something been really weird about that view, right? I mean, I don't know. Maybe it's like... I think what we're talking to be talking about is more of a cachet thing. And when I'm talking about is like... Raw sales, but it's like... More of the numbers thing.

Yeah, I don't know. It's just like, it's... There's something particularly imperialistic about, like, Apple's future is forcing development to accelerate in Africa so they can sell... And it's like, yeah, it's a good thing, but like, it's such a... There's such a disconnect there between the incentives of one party and the incentives of another. you know like that's that's what I worry about it's like I would rather have these companies be

focused on inventing disruptive and cool new like technologies for for like the consumers who can afford the stuff to use instead of trying to get other markets online to afford the expensive products they already make but everything's going to get turned around exactly right what about the iPhone iPhone 5 SE oh yeah so here the rumors so and I think that I think they all map to a thing and I want to hear what you got sending these phones. But I think they all map to a thing, which is a really interesting thing Apple could do to make sure their sales start going up over every quarter is get everybody about a new phone every year, which is their obvious goal, right? So all the carriers in the United States have an upgrade program like Next or Edge or whatever

the hell it is. I am on Next because it's just, it was easier to do that than anything else. So I get a new phone every year through Next. AT&T sends me a lot of thirsty text messages like, time for a new phone. And then I send my old phone. And they're like, we didn't get your new phone. We didn't get your old phone in the mail. we're just going to charge you anyway. That's true. Then I have to call them and be like, did you get my phone? And they're like, we did.

So anyway, Apple released its own upgrade program to get you a new phone every year. Like, their goal is to make you buy a new phone every year. Like, that's what they want the top end of their market to start doing. That's one way to increase their sales. But I think that means the phone has to look different every year. I don't think they can do the S cycle that way.

I think they have to go to sort of the iPod thing where, like, one year was tall and one year was fat and one year was skinny. You know, like, every year of the Apple, book different. I mean, with the iPod, if I had an iPod that was a couple years old, I didn't mind because I liked the way that iPad was better than the newer iterations of it. Right. Yeah, but like the, they can get past like people needing the fastest, the highest resolution, the best camera. Yeah, and they can't be in the speeds and feeds. Anyway, that's just one theory. So that's iPhone 7, I think, is a big deal. There's rumors that's going to have two cameras in the back. And no headphone port. Really great pictures and no headphone jack. And then there's another crazy-ass rumor, which I think is, I think the name is false, but the product is true. I love the name.

The iPhone. This is about the 5. Yeah, the 5C. Five C. It's 5S. 5C. Ridiculous name. It's the 5SE.

5C. No, not the 5C. What is it called? 5S. 5C. The 5C. Wait, what? Yeah.

What's the 5C say? What's the 5 say? Yes, it's in Spanish. It's Flau. So their thing, right now, they still saw the iPhone 5S. Yeah. And that's the small one.

That's the smallest one they sell. I just found mine, actually, in my desk. I will say the iPhone 5 in black might be the prettiest iPhone. I always thought it was the iPhone. That's my black space great. No, the first one was like murdered out black. It was so hot looking. Lauren, are you just slamming Cheetos into a microphone right now?

What is happening over there? I'm sorry, eating popcorn with your cat. We stopped the show to bring you back. And Lauren's like, I'm taking food. photos of my cat and I'm just going to grind these Cheetos into a microphone. Anyhow, so they still saw the 5S. And now the rumor is they're going to update the 5S design to give it like curved glass. Keep the size and give it like the 6S's internals.

It was originally going to be the 6s internals, but now they're thinking it'll be the 6S's internal. They're just going to update it. So they're going to get a generation. Man. Would you buy that phone? I was such a big. big phone hater, like such a big phone

hater. And then I got this 6 plus and my life's so good and I love it so much. And the fact that they're like doing a little phone again, I'm like, wait, but I just got really happy here. Well, but they're still going to make the big phone. I know, but like... Is you got the 6 plus or was your life... Or like, are they correlated? I'm curious.

Because you said you got it and your life was so good. And like, I'm wondering if they just concurrently happened that way? No, they like... I bought it at the Apple store. because I smashed my 5S, and I had to buy a new one. And they were like, oh, you have two weeks to return it. And I was like, okay, I know I'm stubborn. I have to get the 6 plus.

The dude was like, you're going to hate it. You're going to bring it back. I'm like, okay, well, I'll just bring it back. Like, if I hate it, but I am stubborn and I have to just, like, take it home with me. And it just was like in an afternoon. I fell in love, and I just don't want to go back to a small phone. But you don't have to. I know.

They're still going to make the big phone. But it's weird. I don't know. I feel out of touch. You know, I don't like that. All right, well, I'm just going to lie. Lauren, like, what's... The rumored pricing of this 5 SE,

which I'm now convinced is, like, special edition or something, like the Nike Fuel Band SE. Yeah. But the rumored price is around $450 or maybe less. So that, to me, is, like, you're looking at what, you know, budget, not budget phone pricing, but, like, at least Nexus phone pricing. Right. Yeah.

Yeah, I just don't... I don't know. I get that they, again, like, Apple needs to increase sales. So, like, there's anybody with an iPhone 5 who doesn't want to get a 6 or a 6 plus because it's too big. And they can convince them to just, like, get a new phone. Right? That's a, because it's Apple and they just have so much scale, that's like 10 million people or whatever. You know, it's like ridiculous, huge number of sales it can make.

This is my mother. She won't get a big phone. She's like, thinks they're ugly, wants that same design that she likes. So Apple could just, like, do it. I would consider going back to a little phone for. A lot of people feel emotionally connected to little phones. Yeah. What?

People love little phones. Dude, did you ever use a VIR? No. That was a dumb phone. No, it was great. Can I say this? I'm not going to, I'm not going to reveal the big reveal.

But last night I was looking through some old Engadgett files. I have like 14 gigs of like and gadget stuff on my computer. I have so many videos of Palm Pre and Veer hands-ons on my computer. They're just buried in an old, like, you know, it's like an old hard drive. It's like a backup of an old laptop. I have 14 gigs of like videos of like and gadget hands-ons with routers and like priest. It's like crazy. Yeah.

I watch so many Palm Pre hands like various like we're going to go deep in the browser. We're going to like play with the VR keep like nonsense. Yeah. That phone was dumb. I can say this having exhaustively researched it. Yeah, but I used it. Yeah. That was your main phone?

It was for a while. Why do you think people love little phones? Um, pockets. and... Yeah. Pockets. Pockets and being used to things. Yeah.

Yeah. I just... Exercise. Mm-hmm. I think, too. Yeah, it is annoying to strap this thing on me when I'm exercising, because it's quite large. But you know my theory is they should just bring back the iPod.

This is, I didn't do this, but I should do. I was on CNBC, and what I really wanted to do more than anything is when Andrew Al-Sarkin, like, held up his iPhone and it's like, what's their next thing? I want to be like, Andrew, it's the iPod. And I was like, like, I was like, like, I was like, They're all queued up to do it. They still sell the shuffle. They sell the weird new nano with like a fake iOS on it.

My friend's thought. This one is waterproof. If they made an iPod with some like exercise features and they saw the touch. It worked with, but it had physical buttons or the wheel and it worked with Apple Music. Yes. And it was like 200 bucks or 150 bucks. Yes, dude. Buy it.

That's it. $150. That's it. That's it. That's got some like step counting and other exercise stuff. That's the Nana with Apple Music. Yeah. what that is. But can I talk to it to tell it what to do so I don't have to press anything?

Okay. Yeah. Why? That's it. Because I've said so. Because we're dreaming, Nilai. We're dreaming, Neal. I hate dreams. Oh, they're the worst. Lauren, what would make you buy an iPod? God, just having me? I think probably if it made dinner for me. It's ridiculous. No, but in all seriousness, I do, I do love this little shuffle because it's waterproof. It was waterproofed by another company, not Apple. And it's great for swimming. And it's great for just, like, clipping on yourself and running when you just want some locally stored music. And, like, I dig it. I feel like, I mean, I feel like the iPod touch is great for, you know, my niece and nephew love their iPod touches because they play games and they, like, FaceTime.

Yeah, that's what the touch is for. And they think it's cool. Wait, wait, wait. You get FaceTime at 4 in the morning by your niece and nephew? They're on the East Coast. And so when they get up before they go to school, sometimes they will, like, FaceTime and it's 4 in the morning for me. And they're like, Auntie! And I'm like, oh, my God, I need to teach you not just how to I message, but also how do you tell time zone differences.

But, um, it's really cute. And, uh, but no, I mean, for me, like I, I, I'm either phone or bust, like, phone or something that's, like, has local storage and is tiny and disposable like this. I'm not, at this point, I don't think I would get an iPod without any type of cellular connectivity. I don't know. I'm, I would, the iPod classic, the 160 gig, seven-charters shy iPod Classic. Yep. Right now on Amazon, how much do you think it costs the Amazon right now? Ooh, 169.

Can I see? Lauren. You can't cheat. No cheating. Cheating. Don't cheating. Just because, you know, we should. I'll just be the person that tells you.

You know, okay, fine. You're, you guess. I'm going to guess, I'm going to guess, um, $305. No. It's higher. It's like, literally, it's like $500. Yeah. What?

Yeah. $5.09. But the move is you buy a busted one and then you can put an SSD in it. You can, there's a kit you can buy to put an SSD into an old iPod. This is like ridiculous. And then it's super fast. Yeah. Sounds like a great thing to write.

for the weekend. That sounds like Deeter just wrote his weekend. No man, I'm telling you. There's something, I just wrote this thing about like how record players and film camera, like, there's something about the iPod that captured the, like, the feeling of owning some music of like having a physical thing that you loved.

Right. That's, how long have we been verge casting? Who knows? I don't know. By the way, that's the funny thing about all these, like, digital media devices. Like, we keep getting further and further into the Borg, because remember when the iPod felt,

it felt like having digital music files, MP3 stored an device was so, it felt so nebulous and like you didn't own anything anymore because it wasn't CDs and there wasn't record players, I mean records, and now like that feels like it's a physical, tangible thing compared to the

streaming services that we're using. Well, no, because my, well, so I said, well, no, but I meant yes. I meant to emphatically agree with you. But no, yes. But no, yes. the iPod was like a single tasking object right so at least it was like this is my music

oh I played a bunch of brick breaker on the iPod I never do that stuff but like but like it was meant and now your phone is like it's every object it lacks a single coherent identity because it's everything that you do I don't know anyway and I feel like we should be playing sad music and I should be talking about the loss of identity

in the digital future The saddest and darkest thing, I think, is moving the phone app off of the main page that you use. Because it's just like, I'm not using that. Wait, you don't have the phone app on your main page? No. Whoa. It's on the, well, I only have two pages, but it's on the, it's on the bomber page. It's like with stocks and like the Apple weather.

Mine's from the upper left hand corner, the corner that's hardest to reach on the main page. I'm still. It definitely doesn't get to be on the dock. I mean, who are you even calling? I call Dieter. You just call on the phone That's about it I called Deeter and I call Becky

Those are like literally the first two people That's it There's nobody else Can I ask you guys what you thought about Tim Cook's remarks about virtual reality I'm curious Did we talk about it? I think for

I don't know The iPhone is going to be a part of virtual reality Just because You can buy like the plastic holder for it Google Yeah but apparently the screen is not good For VR headsets They need to they need to like

Basically like switch to OLED And change their screen approach before it'll be good to just use an iPhone. Yeah, but it's going to get them in that first wave. The first wave is here and gone. Well, you know what I'm saying, the Oculus wave, right? Like, Oculus is going to come out. Everyone's going to be interested in it.

And there's going to be, like, a little cult of, like, VR accessories for your iPhone and apps. And, like, everyone's going to play with it on their... They're going to be in that... Because people have it, and you can do it. And it's not great. And then I think that the thing they need to do is when everyone's like, okay, this is not great, but I'm really into this. I want to try something else. Then they need to be ready with the product.

Right. And I don't know. That's sort of my very high level read on it. God, I can't wait to hear Johnny Ive talk about like how you look not like an idiot wearing a VR headset. Oh my God. Like, just imagine imagine him talking about the design of a VR headset and how

amazing it is. No, what I'm imagining is like Tim, because you know, they plan their products like years in advance, right? So Tim Cook was like he had his like morning, his like five hour Monday meeting. And he was like, All right, guys, we've got to do a VR headset. And I was like, no. I'm actually just going to design the retail stores and the spaceship building.

And somebody else can do that shit. He just, like, refused. And that's why he's like, Sir Johnny, who has no job anymore. He's like, fuck it, I'm out. Like, I'm going to do this spaceship. Anna Lauren, what do you think of the VR stuff? I mean, he said it, but like, what he says it? Like, he just, I think you just said something relatively positive to not sound like a

hater, right? Yeah. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. It is kind of hard to imagine everyone sitting around wearing bright white Apple-branded headsets on their faces in the same way that we've been wearing the current batch of really early solutions, like whether it's cardboard or gear or whatever it might be. And by gear, I mean, Samsung's solution. I mean, I think Apple could potentially have a future in serving up the right kind of video content for that.

especially if they're focusing more on services. And if they believe the future of consuming content, especially TV as apps, then almost certainly some of those apps will be serving up like 360-degree video. So I see that there are a lot of potential for Apple to be like a platform in VR, but I have a hard time wrapping my head around, no pun intended, wrapping my head around, like an Apple headset.

I mean, I think the Apple would much rather do what they, like when the iPhone came out, it had amazing new technology that changed the way we thought about phones. a capacitive touchscreen, right? And that was like, whoa. Once you make the whole thing a capacitive touchscreen, you can do stuff that phones haven't done before. I think Apple would much rather do like some magic leap,

like beam the images directly into your retinas shit than create a giant-ass headset. Right. I think that's their move. That's even further from accessible consumers. Yeah. I don't know. A light pair of glasses that shoots lasers in my eyes.

I'd rather wear that than an oculus riff. But you know, it's Apple. It's Apple and they're not classically first to market. Right. They're going to wait and they're going to wait and hope that they've got some kind of technology they built in house that gives them a leg up over what else is out there. Yeah. Which is the thing they didn't have with the watch. Burn.

Okay. We should talk about the next thing. Because we could go down the, they don't tell us how many watches they sold. Yeah. Forever. But they also didn't tell us how many watches sold. So it doesn't matter. Righted well.

Anyway, so it's true. Who knows? Who knows if that's just skyrocketing beats headphone sales. I'd like everyone to just take a moment. I'm ready. I'm so ready for this. And just accept that somebody who cares deeply about cable boxes and the software they run is about to lose his shit on the verge cast. It's going to happen.

Take it away, Neely. Okay. There's no more fucking complicated, insane piece of technology in your home than your television and your cable box. It is ridiculous. It is, here's what I think. it is it's like you know there's like the fish in the ocean who have were like crazy right wait what there's like just hold go with me what crazy looking crazy fish crazy you mean like the marianna's trench like the ones with like yeah the ones who light bulb on their head yeah they're crazy looking

they're not like crazy acting yeah no they're but there's also like crazy I think they're totally just crazy eating and live you know you know crazy Vinny the fucking nonsense fish yeah nonsense That's fish. Crazy-ac-ac-fish. You'll kill a motherfucker. He doesn't care. Like that fish. Yeah, that guy.

Okay, that crazy fish in your TV. Go on. No. So, go with me on this. There's a fish. The bottom feeder is the extremophile fish. Like, evolved in crazy, weird, shitty ways. Well, great ways of your fish.

But, like, not ways that you... Tighten it up. Okay. God damn it. Anyway, that's a cable box, right? Like, there's the ecosystem that we all live in where like regular technology evolved the way that we're used to.

And there's a cable box which is plugged into like the deep sea vent spewing carbon monoxide and it evolved on a different path. Okay. I'm here. That's cabbox. There's literally every attempt the tech industry has ever made to get in or around the cable box has failed. Like died on the rocks, almost killed. Like Logitech died on the rocks.

Like the comptych died on the rocks. company almost failed and went away because they tried to build Google TVs to get in the way of the cable box. Microsoft, I was telling them, Lauren, last night, they put out the Xbox One. They brought me up there to do a feature. Every single person that I interviewed for that feature got fired because they tried to get in the way of the TV with the Xbox One. They're like, screw it. We're like, over this. They hired a new guy, Phil Spencer, and he's like, I'm not really into this cable box features.

And the Xbox One is a games console again. They're like just gave up. Sounds like cable's a bully. Cable's kind of a bully. It's really hard to get in there because it's like, It's like if I threw you into the ocean, I was like, breathe that weird stuff coming out of the body of the ocean, you would just die. And that is like literally the tech industry trying to get near the cable box. Every time they try to do it, they die.

Apple put out the new Apple TV. They were supposed to get a streaming service. They couldn't do it because they had to breathe the weird stuff, speeding out of the event. They died and they put out the regular, like literally every time. So now the FCC. But it seems to me like if I just might say something quickly. It seems to me like when tech companies started to get into this what we call over-the-top streaming video, right, OTT video. The ideal solution was, like, is there a way to make these boxes and maybe have them merge or blend with cable in some way or get live feeds somehow or, like, basically let you plug these boxes into, like, your cable input one, right?

But now, like, OTT video is it. I disagree with you. Like, I totally disagree with you. Like, it is, like, it's great. And, like, people, like, Nicola probably don't have cable service. I think you've told me you don't have cable service. Correct. But you like sports.

No, lots of people still have cable. He did like sports until the Packers lost. This is terrible. Shows off the rails. God damn it, everyone's fired. No, like, lots of people still watch television, right? Like, Game of Thrones is widely watched, and it's not just people stealing HP. I watch it without cable.

But you have, like, you have a store. Now. You have HP, but you pay television. I know. Get on your train, man. You're right. No, I'm not. Yeah.

I mean, like, there's a switch because it was so, I think the cord cutter movement is a lot driven by the fact that, like, buying cable service and plugging a new cable box is an expensive, bad experience. It's so expensive. It's super fucking expensive. And then you get this thing in your house. Everything else in your house is, like, a $700 iPhone that's beautiful and does exactly what you want all the time or a really nice laptop that works.

Like, everything else is evolving. And then you've got this, like, filter feeder that's like garbage. You know, like, why is it so expensive? I don't want anything to do with it. I'm just going to use my computer. Like, that's the tension. It's not that people don't want television.

And so, like, the OTT services were we're going to deliver television. We're just going to bypass this cable system that's garbage, and we're going to deliver television over the internet, and that's going to be great. The problem is the cable companies are still huge, have millions of customers, and have a total monopoly on sports, on, like, award shows, on. the last episode of Mad Men, like, whatever the hell it is. Things that people want to watch in real time with each other. They have a total monopoly on real-time things with each other,

and they are very good at programming, like, deep cuts of things. Like, Shark Tank would have never been a big popular show without the money that came from the cable industry, right? Like, if Shark Tank was a web series, it would have been a Silicon Valley web series and not a cultural phenomenon. And that is, like, just true. Or Survivor, like, whatever the hell it is. like cable companies have bunch of monies, big networks have bunch of money.

They're good at programming shows. A lot of people want to watch them marketing those shows. So it's this monster that you can't like disrupt with just Netflix. You can cut away at it and then they'll get scared and like do stuff. But you have to make that thing a better experience. It has to happen. So there's like two ways to do it. And the way the cable companies have been trying to do it forever is turning their cable service into an app so that you would buy a box.

You're like, because you have to pay Comcast in the end. Like you, all of us do, right? Like, or whatever cable service you have. Like, you need the internet in your house, and those are the companies that provide it. So they're happy. They're going to get paid one way or another. So you buy a box. So their dream is you buy a box from them.

It's like your cable modem. That will, when you're in your house, that's your router. You open the app on your iPad. It knows you're in your house, connected to their router, and it turns into a TV. Or you buy a Samsung smart TV. and you open the Comcast or the Time Warner or whatever app on it. It knows it's in your house, on your Wi-Fi, connected to their network, and it turns into their TV with their guide.

That is what they're stumbling towards, because they don't want to ship hard drives, and they don't want to ship big boxes to your house and have them break. And I don't want them to do that either. They don't either. They would rather just be like, here's the Time Warner app. We should all just stop. So they're getting there.

But 20 years, this is true, 20 years ago, before any of this stuff existed, Congress passed a law, saying the cable companies should open up the ends of their network so that any device can access video programming services. The first, and they said FCC figured it out. So FCC's first cut was cable card, which is like disaster. I don't want to get into you because it makes me cry. Cable card is a really good idea, though. In 1998, cable card was a great idea. Best idea. Yeah, let's like have a big silver card. You know, like plug it into a thing and like clamp a thing and like boot it up. Like, yeah. It was a PCMCA card, right? Yeah, it was modified. Close. Yeah, but it was like

It was like total 90s computer tech. I was going to make an adapter for that thing and slap it into the springboard module in a visor prison. I was really excited. Then you were going to authenticate your visor to the concept. Whatever. I don't think it was called conference. I'm just trolling you. I hate you.

Anyway. So, cable card failed. So then yesterday, Tom Wheeler of the SEC, Tom, Nut Neutrality Wheeler, lights up, comes out of nowhere, drops a bomb, says, I'm opening up to, I'm opening cable boxes. He named his campaign, hashtag unlock the box. Right. Which is fine. And everyone is surprised.

And because the industry, the tech industry has been trying to, like, get in the game with the cable companies and programmers, like this would be great for Apple if all they had to do was put a box in your house and then suddenly your box with a cable box. Yep. That would be great for them because in the Apple TV would just be cable box. Apple would be great for Roku. It would be great for Microsoft and Google who have been desperately trying to make that box for the past 15 years. Right. but then all of them basically said nothing yesterday.

Right, Lauren. So Lauren was like talking to everybody yesterday. No one really was like overjoyed. No, a lot of people didn't, wouldn't comment actually. And I mean, my interpretation of this is that in terms of the, it depends on what side of the industry you're on, right? Obviously the cable companies were bristling more at what Wheeler had to say. One cable company said that it was a, a. solution in search of a problem. Another one said that they feared that the proposal would strip

away the tools that would honor licensing agreements as they exist now. Some people are saying, well, we are being very innovative right now. So there's that. But on the tech company side, we've gotten a lot of no comments. And I think that in terms of like the existing businesses that tech companies have in over the top video or in selling set top boxes, this proposal really wouldn't do much for them because they've been fighting this uphill battle for so long anyway. I think like if you looked at something like Apple's reported attempt to put together some type of skinny bundle of channels for people to watch, like this kind of proposal might help that initiative.

But in terms of... Why? Because it would tear down, as Wheeler said, it would tear down the barriers that currently exist in, like unlocking boxes and unlocking some of this content and making it like I think those are different, right? Because Apple doing a skinny bundle is like Apple going to the programmers directly and basically being a cable company, right, and saying, okay, we've locked up ESPN, HBO, ABC, NBC, Fox, CBS. Those are all the channels you need.

We sell them to you for $19. The skinny bundle turns Apple into Comcast, right? They become your cable company. Right, they just serve it over the top instead of over M. But that's my question. We're talking about 20 years ago. What about 20 years from now, do you think that people will still be watching

TV over cable and satellite? Like the actual technology will be like cable and satellite? Or do you think people will be watching TV over the internet? Well, so right now, half the cable companies deliver TV over IP. Right. Right. There's like multiple layers here. Like there's the transport layer

and I think everybody would like to see that to move to IP in one way or another unless you're a satellite company you've got some rocks in space to deal with and then there's the like access layer which is what the FCC is trying to open up which is the one that like authenticates you to

transport and then there's the content layer and so like the skinny bundle like right now everyone's sort of arguing about the content layer so Apple can't sign a Like, you know, like the rumor was Microsoft was going to sign a deal with Comcast for Xbox One, and Comcast walked away. Microsoft was like left holding the bag.

The rumor was that Apple was going to sign a deal with Time Warner for the Apple TV and then got skittish and walked away. And then Time Warner was left holding a bag, right? Like, um, like that's that layer. But it seems as the Wheeler's proposal wasn't just on the content side that it actually was in the technology side of things too. No, so it's not. Maybe I have, maybe. No, so it's not. So Wheeler's proposal is, I want you industry.

The FCC is now. manding that the industry come together and form an open standard that lets you, that transmits signals to every box on your network that tells you what's available. So it gives you the guide and gives you the VOD information. It sends you the copyright settings. So do not record, which is a copyright flag you can set. And the actual content itself. So it's technology agnostic. The proposal is... Make a standard for sending TV to a box. Then anybody can make the box. Right. All you have to do is authenticate the box and say, I am a customer of this company. And then however it delivers stuff to you, it should do that.

And like most of, I think Lauren, where we're getting kind of tied up here is most of the answers to that, like, demand look like you put a cable modem in your house and that turns cable into Internet and then sends TV to everything. Right. But it doesn't necessarily have to be that. You could theoretically plug the coax directly into a box. Right. Right. Or you could just plug, have everything be on Wi-Fi. Right. That's the part that doesn't matter.

So Apple's skinny bundle is them turning into an over-the-top cable provider and dealing with programmers directly. Wheeler's proposal is you will pay Comcast for television, but Apple will build the interface on top of that television. Right. Then how does that help consumers at all? Because you're still getting bundled. Because you don't have to use Comcast shitty box.

Yeah, because you don't have to use a box, right? And the Comcast video content, presumably in that interface, we'll sit next to Netflix's video content, we'll sit next to iTunes video content, we'll sit next to Hulu video content. If all those first class citizens If this is really just about boxes,

then that to me is very incremental change. Well, no, I think it's more like if you... But you won't have to rent the box. You have to rent the... It's more like in the... For a long time, you could buy a TV and just like plug it into the wall and you didn't need a cable box

and you would just like get television from the cable company. Like that's how I grew up. Like, we didn't have cable box. And we just plug the TVs in the coax shack in the wall. And you're done. And we're done. And the TVs could decode the TV and you could change your channels and it's fine.

And no, and like there's no innovation allowed on top of that because everything happens to the cable blocks now. So you can't, like, get a better guide. You can't search anything. You can't, like, I can't walk in the house and be like, Alexa, show me the football game and have Amazon, like, tune the TV to a football. Well, on top of that, I don't know, the last time, like, I was at, oh, my God, my mother-in-law's house. I have a mother-in-law. and using her She's on

Deeter got married in Vegas Suddenlink Yeah was the company And the guide Was three lines of shows A giant Like now playing

Like live video box A giant info box That presented zero information And two huge ads And I could only page through TV Three shows at a time In the guide And that was the only

Like It was ridiculous It was the worst interface And like huge ads So not On top of Like the joy Of not having to use

That crappy box and having cable's video content have to compete directly on the same interface with Netflix and Hulu and YouTube and whatever else. There's also like the money aspect. The money of I don't have to pay Comcast or SunLink six bucks to rent the thing or 12 bucks to rent the thing. I don't have to watch them get paid for ads that I never wanted and aren't part of the core experience of what I'm doing. Like there's like the cable companies hate the boxes almost as much as we do, but they love the money that it makes. They love that. And so, like, they're going to fight Tom.

Like, I think Tom Wheeler and the FCC are going to lose. I have this gut feeling that, like, at the end of all of this, there will be some sort of, like, pretend solution that they're going to make an open standard, and it's going to do the software version of what cable card did, which was fail radically, and only TiVo will support it. It's probably true. Tivo's super into this, by the way. No, I think Google was in that mix.

I've been told that Amazon has been in the mix. I think this, so Wheeler's got the votes, right? There's a vote on February 18th. He's got three Democratic commissioners. Like February 18th? He's only given people like two and a half weeks. This is like a mic drop moment for Tom Wheeler. Right.

The election's about to go, right? Like it's about to kick into gear. All the focus is off Obama and onto Hillary and presumably Trump. And Wheeler is like, you know what? One last shot for Tommy. And like he's literally like, fuck it. Like I'm going to screw with the cable companies again. Wow.

But he's got the votes. He's got an act of Congress that says that cable companies have to do this. Yeah. It's a 20-year-old act of Congress, but whatever. He's got it. He's got three Democratic commissioners. He's just going to do it. And then the problem is what you're saying,

which is if Apple and Microsoft and Google and Intel and Amazon and whoever the else wants to make a Samsung, Samsung should be huge in this. Vizio should be huge in this, right? Like, Samsung makes televisions. Yeah. If you could buy a fucking Samsung smart TV. And plug the coax right into it and you're done. And that's it.

And then it just like has your Wi-Fi router. It could be everything. It could be like the HP Hub. You don't understand. This is like my dream. I know. And it's really silly that it's not real. Right.

Because it feels like it's one of those things where it's like that. If that happened tomorrow, I think every person in the world would be like, okay, I accept that that is a reality. That seems like it makes sense and I'm happy about it. Your TV should work with your cable service. Done. Right? Without their crappy box in between. That's the dream.

The problem is that cable isn't internet. Right. And the problem is that because we've had these like parallel evolutionary pass for so long, every tech company is doing what Lauren. is saying and they're like building their over-the-top solutions or billions of dollars invested into them into building streaming services and working with Netflix and talking to programmers and whatever the hell that is they're doing to make the future of television that they might not show up to the party to build the standard right which then the like the dream like Samsung

will show up to the party they're like yeah we make TVs yeah and they'll be there early they'll be that they'll be those people that show up like at the time you wrote of the invitation like right on the dot. They'll ring the doorbell and you'll really pissed that they're there. That's Samsung. So here are the two nightmare scenarios on the spectrum. As far as I can see them, there are two nightmare scenarios. One, FCC loses because the cable companies say, look, we're going to put an app. Comcast is like, look, we believe X1 is a platform, even though it's an iPad app, whatever. But we believe X1 is our platform. And the way we're going to deliver your dream of getting rid of the cable box is we'll put an app.

everywhere. Right? And the FCC will say, great, you've now insure competition in the market, you have to put an app on every platform. Because the thing that we don't want you to do is sign an exclusive deal with Apple. So if you're a Comcast customer,

you have to buy an Apple TV and not a record. I mean, if that happens, I'm launching a brand new smart TV platform the week after the SEC rules, so they'll have to support me. Just to screw with them. So that's a nightmare scenario, right? Because Comcast can afford to build an Apple TV app on basically a TVO

which basically iOS that'll like run on the iPad. They can afford to build an Android because Sony TV is run an Android. Then they have to build a Tizen app because Samsung TV's run Tizen. They have to build a WebOS app. The WebOS app is actually really easy to build. They start to build it because LGTVs run on WebOS. Then they have to...

Roku. They have to build a Roku app. They have to build a Windows app for Xbox. Yep. Okay, Comcast... Sounds like a lot of job creation. A Wii app. Yeah, so Comcast has to do.

That's fine. but like what if you are Sudden Link and now you're screwed and like Sudden Link has to build a Tyson app and it's like that is the worst case scenario right? Like that's a nightmare

scenario where we're telling bad companies who are bad at software that they have to make more software so that's bad. Then way on the other What if they just licensed it? They still have to make it right? They still have to get it.

They still have to brand it. They still have to bring it up. They still have to support it for all those customers and all those parts like well if they license it, that they're going to license it from somebody bad, right? The only company that's licensed like good smart TV software is like TCL, right?

And like you can get, you can buy a Tvo from Southern Link, right? Yeah. So like they could. Yes, it's true. But it's still fundamentally these companies have to acquire. Yeah. Or develop software and then support the software. And then that's the nightmare scenario of TiVo releases an update to the TiVo core software

that's licensed to Suddenlink and SunLink doesn't support it for like eight years. Right. And then it's like an internet box in your house and it has like security issues. And then suddenly like the hackers are watching the webcam and your ridiculous Panasonic plasma TV. It's all bad. All that's bad, right? Nightmare scenario. All the way on the other side is saying, okay, you're a video provider.

And we're saying every box should access your shit. And Comcast is like, okay, we're a video provider and we're opening up the front end of our networks so every box and access our shit. our biggest competitor is Netflix, they get to pick and choose their platforms. Why do you make it so anyone can be able to build a fucking Netflix app? And that's also a nightmare scenario. Actually, that sounds great. Why would you randomly force Netflix to open the front end of its service? I would love that.

As long as you're authenticated to be paid, put a copyright protection. I don't do it. That seems insane to me. Why? Because Netflix is like a private company. No. It's a video company. I mean, yeah, they're a private company, but like, what if Comcasts were private, right?

Like, it's not private versus public. It's like, you know, let people make an app. Do you believe the third party Twitter apps should be allowed? Do you believe Twitter should be forced to allow third party apps to access tweets? I think Twitter should just fade away. Honestly, like, I think that light bulb should start flickering and maybe like fade out a little bit. We can have like a romance period at the end where it's real dim. Yesterday it was a beautiful day for Twitter.

This is another big news the week. Nicholas having a Twitter renaissance. It's actually my first Twitter love time. It's not new to me. Like I joined Twitter like most people when it started and was like, okay, whatever. And then I only started using it because of this place. Yeah, because of the verge or Vox Media. Box media, but mostly you guys.

Like a year ago or whatever. And now, yeah, it's a beautiful thing. And it's so funny because you keep being like, Twitter's dead. And I actually had lunch with someone yesterday who, was like, I'm having so much fun on Twitter in the last month, and I'm like, yeah, I know. And then when I left the lunch, Kanye's Tweetstorm, which was beautiful.

Yeah. All right. And the best. And also like, I mean, it was great. We got a rap. No, we got to wrap. I'm just saying, the Netflix question, do you think Hulu should allow any video app to sit on the phone of its service? Like, that's a, I think, a radical position. I don't think so. Okay.

Because that turns every video provider into a dumb pipe. Yep. So like you're saying that Netflix should accept a future where the thing that it is is just a dumb provider of video information. Is Netflix its interface or is it the video content it provides? That's a really excellent. That's it. Kids tweet at at Backlon, their answer to that question.

Preferably in TweetStorm format or the screenshot of text that's not accessible by search engines. Dieter loves that. That's his favorite. Silo your content and send it to Deeter, please. Those are the two nightmare scenarios. I'll agree that they're both nightmares. You hate openness. That's cool. I don't hate. I'm just saying that is like all of a sudden you're so mad at Comcasts that you're fucking with Netflix.

Like that is crazy town. Yeah. Right? Like that seems like now. I mean, Netflix is dead to me because they joined Binjohn. So screw those guys. I mean, of course they're going to. Yeah, I know. But like. And Benjohn is better now today. They, they made it, you can text the short code to turn it on and off. I'm, I'm, I'm like, I'm, I'm like, surprisingly. Is the short code throttle? Text throttle. You actually, you tweet the word throttle directly at John Leisure. And he goes, he's got a panel.

He's got a net neutrality panel. With all of his users. My God. Anyway, I think I'm mellowing. I think I'm fine with Benjohn. Yeah. I got one policy fight in me a year and this one's going to be it. Whatever.

You want to be a T-Mobile subscriber and let John Ledger, like, slow your data down? Like, godspeed. I can't tell if I'm a T-Mobile subscriber or not. What does that mean? Because I use a service, I use a MV&O that uses T-Mobile. Oh, yeah, fine, right? Right. So does that mean I'm, I can't tell.

All right. We have no time for lightning round. We could do one lightning round thing. Yeah, Nicola, you've got some stuff. One thing. I mostly want to do Nicholas Kanye Corner always. Do it. Well, yeah, get in the sweet-s-shrum situation.

Well, first, let's back up. Kanye renames album from Switch to Waves. Point one to know. Point two to know. February 11th, we're just going to do this. February 11th, he will debut waves at Madison Square Garden. He also will debut Yeezy Season 3, his fashion collection. Point three, he tweets a picture of Kim, okay, she treats a track list, you should know that. He tweets a picture of Kim wearing, like, season three, like, preview look, and it has Adidas logos on it, but Adidas isn't, Adidas produced the first season, did not produce the second

season and won't really tell me if they're producing the third season, though I'm asking. So, like, what is their involvement with this? So, yeah, February 11th is going to be crazy. Tomorrow on Ticketmaster, if you have an Amex, you can do a pre-sale thing and buy tickets to this. I don't know what they cost. They're listed as $0. I hope it stays at $0. Love the idea of doing it for the kids free. But who knows? So that's going to happen. That's going to be crazy and, like, the best and whatever. And then the Tweetstorm was deleted, but you can definitely read it on The Verge, right? You guys saved it.

It's on TheVirge.com. But basically, that's what Twitter is for. Kanye went, yeah, Kanye went off on Wiz Khalifa. They have a romantic partner in Amber Rose in common. Not a current romantic partner. No, no, no. Kanye and Amber Rose dated, whatever. And Wiz and Amber Rose have a child.

And, yeah, he went off on Wiz for just like. like sucking and then he also was like but you wear cool pants and I wish I was tall and skinny and you like you yeah whiz wears cool pants which is just like it's the best it was the best it was a real moment it really brought the house down all day it really did I got that I had a really long lunch and I got back to the office and I sat down and like everyone just looked at me and they're like where have you been we have so much to talk about what he was like I made it so we could wear skinny jeans yes I made it so we could wear skinny jeans it's amazing I mean like that of all of the things to brag about in your life.

You're like, I made it so we could wear skinny jeans. Also, it's not the best album of the year. It's the best album of life. I just love the dude. I will say that I saw so many people riff on the I made it so we could wear skinny jeans yesterday. Oh, I know. The internet got really, so good.

Yeah, it was good. Fast and beautiful. Again, another John Fort reference. His tweet was, I made it so finance reporters could wear a jacket and no tie. Which is like super funny. I wish I had made one. Damn it.

You got, the window's still open. Okay. Actually, no, the window's closed, but it will open again for, like, callback time. One of my goals is to be better at making memes. 2016, I really. Anything could happen. Wait, like, you want to participate in the meme culture? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You want to kick one off. No, no, I want to participate. You know, we have a meme generator at the company. I know, but my brain got to get there. Brain got to get there. 2016. All right, that is our show. That's got to be it.

Brain got to get there. That is clearly the title of our show. I don't think that there's another choice. Anyhow, that's our show. We have many more shows. Lauren, plug your show. It's called Too Embarrass to Ask, and it's a podcast. I do it with Carra Swisher of Recode.

It is actually a Recode radio show, and you can find it on iTunes and tune in, I believe, as well. Yeah, it's really fun. It's available on Fridays. It's really fun. It's a consumer tech focus show. We answer some reader and some listener questions, but we've also had some pretty cool guests in so far. Microsoft fans, Sinovsky was on.

Yeah. Yeah. And this week we have the founder of Athos, which is a really interesting wearable tech company. They're building technology directly into clothing. And so we talked to him. That's going to be publishing first thing tomorrow morning on iTunes. Awesome. Then we have a thousand other verge shows. Every day and you, no, just the, just the few. ESP is back weekly. He's back with Liz and Emily. Yep. Chris Plant, What's Tech, rock and rolling.

And then Walt and ID Control, Out Delete, which is super fun. We also talked about Apple and Twitter this week, in case you didn't get enough. And there were some sick burns at the end. Walt just burned HP and Carly Fury into the ground at the end of that show. Just went for it. Anyway, so that was good. There's a bunch of ways to access us on social media, including Twitter, which is either dying or having a renaissance, depending on here you're listening to.

You can find Nickel on Snapchat. Nicola Fumo, all together. All together. You can find the Verge on Snapchat or at Verge. You can find us on Instagram. We're at Verge. Where else? And Facebook.

Our Facebook video program, popping off, by the way. Million view videos left and right every week. Really good time. And on YouTube at the Verge. We're really close to a million subscribers. Get there. I would love it if you would make your friends. What about Pinterest?

Are you guys on Pinterest? We have 1.3 million Pinterest followers and we don't know what to do with them. If you know what to do with our Pinterest followers, by all means, let me know. I have an email address, and you can write me an email to that address. But no, seriously, go to your friend's computers when they're not looking, and subscribe them to the verge on YouTube. Get us that one million mark by hook or by crook.

Anyway, that was our show. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your thoughts about the FCC Deeder. I'm telling you, man. This is our year. Rock and roll. Brain better work. Damn it.

Goodbye.