The Vergecast - CES 2016 Day 1

Episode Date: January 5, 2016

Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn are joined by Dan Seifert, Lauren Goode, and Sean O'Kane in Las Vegas at CES 2016. The panel discussed the numerous keynotes, including Intel, LG, Samsung and Sony, being very tired, and 3D printed souls. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, and welcome to the Vergecast. I'm Neil Hepatel. I just realize I have no idea what day it is or what time it is. But I know that it is either the first, second, or third day that we have been at CS. We are now calling... Hello, I'm Dieter Bone. In previous years, we called this, the press day, the day when there were all the press conferences. We used to call it day zero.

That's correct. But that's dumb. Well, because yesterday was day zero. No, yesterday was day negative one. Dan Seaford is here. Oh, yeah, this is Dan Seaford. I'm also here. Sean O'Kane is here.

I'm a fan of the negative number days as well. Yeah, the negative number days. So here's, let's start with some real inside baseball media shit. Yeah. Or let's start with the sound of a large foreclimate. So if you haven't heard of the GES. It's early enough in CES that they're still building it. We are a podcast.

It's early enough that I'm still. We should introduce the best cast to all our brand new listeners who are following us because of CES. That's true. So, hello, this is The Vergecast. We're very professional. It is the flagship podcast of multi-channel media experience known as Theverge.com. Today we're broadcasting from Home Depot. No, but we are live at a large trade show called the Consumer Electronics Show.

CES for short, if you're in the know, or if you're an extremely pedantic employee of the Consumer Technology Association, which recently renamed itself from the Consumer Electronics Association, because electronics, is a bad, shitty word, but technology probably means you're like a startup billionaire. Yeah. I see what they did there. Pretty sure that's what that means. So anyway, we're at CS.

It's the biggest trade show in tech. It happens for whatever insane reason, the first week of January. So you go home, you see your family, you open presents, I don't know what you do. Whatever you do at the holidays. However, in whichever way you wish to celebrate. Drink.

You drink, you relax. and then you get on a plane to Las Vegas for a week to be basically just overwhelmed by insane things, all of which light up and have LEDs. So if you're at me, that fills you with rapturous joy. If you're the rest of the tech press, mostly you just like, I don't know, complain on Twitter. But I love CS, and I have for years. And so this show, it's weird. It used to just be about like home theater stuff

And then now it's basically about like smartphone Things that connect to your smartphone Yeah, it's a giant smartphone accessory show Yeah, it's wild We have cars that are smartphones I mean if I have to hear another Volkswagen made a car that they called like the Volkswagen something something touch It's called the E touch

The E touch It's literally a name that HTC rejected for a phone When HTC was still relevant Everybody else stopped putting E in front of things It was like three years ago. Yeah, and I'm... Now they're all at the end of it. It's something E.

The Moto G. E touch. Are you bowling for beers? Bring them over here, Frank. We need bottle open. Look, so here's what you need to know about the Vergecast during CS week. We do it every single day of the show. We are strung out.

Do you have an opener? It's a real key concern here. Yeah, yeah. I have one in my bed. So we do this every day of the show. And each day gets progressively crazier and more tired. Yeah. And we're starting at a pretty high level of crazy and tired right now.

We are. It's been a long day. So the show floor at CES officially opens tomorrow. Yeah. That's when we can run inside and do all the stuff. But if you just think about logistically how a show like CES works, you can't let people run around booths full of new products unless you've announced those new products. Right. So the day before, everyone has all their big press conferences where they announce all the new stuff.

And what's happened now at CES is there's so many companies that are here, and so many new kinds of companies, not just Sony's Samsung LG, but a million car companies are here as well, whatever. There's now two days of pre-build-up before the show begins. So you have day negative one, you have day zero, and you're declaring this year that press day today is now day one. That's how we did it on the site and is what we mean. Right. So we have, because they added an extra day on the front end, we're putting a real Sony press conference. We've talked for 10 minutes.

CES is also your nonstop destination for nomenclature discussion. I have to tell you, look, if you have thoughts about what number of days should be, and I assume that Vergecast listeners are really into numbering days. Yeah. The calendar buffs all. We just spent like two weeks counting down. Most of us just spent two weeks counting the days to Christmas. I mean, this is like what you do in the winter when you can't go outside.

You can't wait for something. days. Sean has a weird holiday traditions. Yeah. Advent calendars. Oh, my God. Okay, so we're here at CS.

Yes. It's been two days of stuff. This is our first day of the Vergecast. We're going to have the Vergecast every day here. We're doing a control walk delete from the stage. We are at the Verge lounge at CS. It is not yet built. The show floor is not yet built.

We're in early. So if you hear construction noises in workers screaming in pain, it's because nothing is complete. They are not. Out-added special effects. We are... Just so you get a lay of the land,

we're here in Central Hall. We are, I would say, a half kilometer away from Sony City. And just two clicks down from Samsung Town. And about 12. Panasonic Stadium is down over... Two blocks away. It has a sign that says Panasonic Stadium.

It's unclear what sports we played there. Inside Panasonic Stadium is the 4K bullpen. Yeah. Oh, and then just next order it. So it's like the real 4K TVs. It's the backup 4K TVs. Let me give you a sense of how fucking crazy this place is. Panasonic built a house.

It's in its booth. They're like, we make a lot of smart house stuff. What if instead of just connecting it to each other and showing how it works, we showed you what it looked like inside of an actual house? And then they built like a very nice sort of Midwestern house. House. Anyway, inside the stadium. Inside the, there's like a rhyme or riddley.

You know, actually what's funny is the house is really expensive because you can see right into Panasonic's from the room. It's like Wrigley Field Okay, so let's start Can I just tell you We all went to press conferences today Yeah, this is why I'm making this joke about Sony And we'll get really deep into Sony a minute Sony had so little to announce at CES

That caused her eye, the CEO Literally came on stage in front of You know, a thousand people or whatever And a live stream and like all this hype And he was like, you know, we could talk about new products So why don't we first talk about about CES. CES is kind of amazing, right?

There's like all these people here. So many people. You put up a chart of like, how many people have sent CES? He's like, you don't really got me. They serve 600,000 pounds of food at CES. And they put up like 600,000,

like in like little like icons like a good infographic. He's like, that was enough to feed like a million bears. And then like, it was just like, what? Are you announcing CES? Sony is your product CES itself? And they just literally patterned for,

25 minutes before announcing a single sad 4K camcorder. I mean, I guess I'd want to lead with the meta-discopion before a 4K camcorder? Yeah, yeah, yeah, anyway. That's sad, though, isn't it? I mean, they were, like, the craziest and wildest press conference. They were really one of the biggest of the last couple years. Right, so my theory is that the first Samsung was Sony, and then Samsung was Samsung, and now Huawei is Samsung. Yeah.

Anyway, Intel tried to be Samsung. Yeah, Intel tried to be Samsung. Still Intel. Anyway, so we got to start. Sean, you're here. We should start with yesterday. The biggest news yesterday, I think.

Yesterday was a lot of like little gadget stuff. It was like a lot of USB type C accessories. You can talk about that. But the biggest, like the big hype-ridden must attend, journalists flying in just for this one event was a car company. Yeah.

Called Faraday Future. Yeah. We did a profile on them that was like Faraday, it was like the Tamara Warren did it. It was great. They're like, they're a new car company. They're building up to something big at CES, and they talk to all the people. And then they had their event.

Do you want to take us through that event? I mean, if you're familiar with car events, especially over the last couple of years, it actually felt a lot, and I think this was purposeful, like a Tesla event. Yeah. It had that, like, plain white stage, but it had the sort of, it was built like Musk usually builds his announcement stages. Not like, you know, you look at some of like, we're going to be. going to be the national auto show next week in Detroit.

And you look at some of the, like, the LA Auto Show. Like, car announcements usually have, like, a much more grandiose look to it. This was very, this was a white stage with some sort of car under a curtain. Yeah. And we had to listen to a lot of people talk. Yeah. And so they're like SVPs and Nick Samson. He was like a well-spoken British man.

Yeah. And so the combination of, like, the extreme tech staging and the accent, made it seem like a parody of, you know, like before Prometheus came out, they did the fake TED Talk. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like explicitly. It had that vibe, which is why it felt so much like a Tesla thing, because it was like, if you closed your eyes and like, you could think that, like, Elon Musk was up there. Because they paraded out like three or four executives before they like got into the, you know, meat and potatoes of the event, they were comparing themselves to other car companies. And at the end, they compared, well, I won't spell that.

And we heard, we heard that. People pronounce Jaguar probably 700 people. Jaguar. Jaguar. I'm calling it Shaguar for the rest of my life. So that was great. Because a bunch of work there. So what they announced,

they get on stage and I'm like, we're a new company. We're so happy to be here. Yeah, the student acceptance is like, we have worked at every company in the world and we can do it to pass. It's just like insane. I mean, he literally sounded like an evil dictator for a while.

And then what they basically announced was it's been 18 months since we started. In that time, we've hired 750 people. Yeah, which is up. Like, even from when we profiled them in the fall, it was like 500. I mean, they're moving. How are they doing that?

Is an open question. Yeah. They have secured a huge investment from a Chinese company whose name alludes me. Lett. LET. I knew it was LTE something. LETV. Self-described Netflix of China.

Right. Entertainment company, which is very interesting. They said, this is not about buying. cars. It's about new ways of doing cars. They had the governor of Nevada on stage. They're opening up a big ass factory in Nevada. They're spending a billion dollars to build a factory.

To build... Well, actually, it's back up real quick. So, we've known about this company for a while. We know that they want to make some sort of electric car that probably has some sort of, or a big level of autonomy. Also, will probably be some sort of subscription-based ride-sharing

service. That's like a little more vague. Like, we know they want to build an electric car. Probably a bunch of different kinds of electric cars. And then, so they've been based in California while they've been teasing out this information over the last two years. And recently they announced that they were going to go sort of the Teth build their own cars

with a billion dollar investment in a factory in Nevada because Nevada is doing a really good job of attracting lots of, especially electric car companies, but lots of new tech companies. And yeah, their governor. I mean, I was at the Daimler Freightliner created a self-driving truck. and showed that off in Nevada last year

because they have looser restrictions on autonomous driving. Right. And he was there. He was like one of the first ones riding in the truck with like the crazy German head of Daimler. Yeah.

It was like the most amazing. Like they honked the horn on the drive out of the tent. We're stoning again. We got it. What did they announce? Yeah. And so they've spent all this time teasing this stuff and like leaking out these little bits of information

but like kicking the can on that actual announcement of like what the car is going to be. And in the meantime, we found out before the press conference, but officially at the press conference, that they've spent a lot of the last 18 months, like, sort of, yeah, we're building this electric car and this whole big service, but we also made this prototype, which they unveiled on stage last night. And admittedly, is a really cool looking car. And we can talk about it. It looks like a hot wheels. It's a concept car. Literally looks like a hot wheels I would have had

when I was like eight years old and run on that orange track in my bedroom. Like not the hot wheels that are like a Corvette or a Mustang. It's like when, Mattel has its own, like, crazy designs and they put these giant fins on things. Well, no, so what they, that was like a, they fucked it up, right? Yeah.

Because that's what everybody's talking about. That's not what they announced. What they announced was, hey, our company is huge. We hired all these people from Apple and Tesla and every major car maker. We have this huge investment from, like, an entertainment company,

which is interesting, if you think about the autonomous car part of it. Yeah. They're basically like movie theaters on wheels, right? Like, that's weird. And then what they actually announced, like the thing that is real was something that they're calling with the vehicle platform architecture. Right. Or the variable platform architecture. Right. That's what the VPA, which is not necessarily a new idea.

No, it's a totally old idea. But it's the core platform for a series of vehicles that is modular. So the wheelbase can get longer and shorter. You can add batteries to it. You can power two wheels or three wheels or four. The added benefit for them for sure is the idea that, like, you would imagine it requires less engineering changing from one model to another because of the way electric cars or this electric car and Tesla and probably most electric cars going to be built is this like a bed of electric batteries. They're laid out in a grid because we don't really, we don't have the technology to build like one big battery that lasts a long time yet for lithium ion. So you lay them out. thousands of them or hundreds of them, but most likely thousands of them in the base of the car. And it looks like it lends itself nicely to making modular cars

because it works really well on a graphic. But yeah, that was the most we learned about what they're actually doing. Right. I mean, that was like the thing that they do. But then they're like, so we can scale this platform any way we want, and they had a video where they were showing like wire frames over the platform. and like the wireframe was very boring. It was like a hatchback, a sedan, an SUV.

Yeah, a crossover. And they're like, and it can seal all the way up to this stupid car. Right? And it like looks like the Batmobile is in Tron, basically. I like Jordan, our transportation reporter, Jordan Goldsland, I think, said it best. It looks like a 60s Batmobile made for like the 21st century. Right. I mean, it looks insane.

It has one seat. It has one seat. It has oxygen and water pumped, like, right to your mouth. Right. There's like a head and neck restraint. it like you get in fancy race. There's also no indication that it moves. There's also no indication of how you get in it.

Like it's clear. I think you have to be born from like the cybernetic. Look, you hire 750 people. Like make a couple clay models. Like we got nothing to do. Like make a Batmobile. Anyway, so that totally distracted from their event. Yeah.

So they put it out and like my entire Twitter timeline was just like jaded tech people being like, this won't disrupt Tesla. And it's like, that. thing is not supposed to. No. This, like, big factory and this architecture is supposed to. Yeah, that's, that's really weird. It just shows that, like, people haven't really paid enough attention to, and I mean,

maybe rightfully so, because it's easy to be, like, who are these guys coming out of nowhere, doing whatever they're doing? But, like, to think that that was going to be the thing that they're actually going to compete with, like, the Model X or the Model S or anything that Tesla's going to make, is just not, that's not what's happening. Yeah, so Chris Sigler and I were talking yesterday. It's like, what they should have done, was in like, we have a plan using this platform to make a hatchback.

And you don't have to show it. Be like, here's our planned model lineup. Like, here's, you can start here and you can scale it to here. And like, we're going to make a little hatchback and a little sedan and a little blah, blah, blah. And then here's this. And if you turn up the crazy dial, like, we can also use this platform to make this race car. Yeah. But I think what precludes them from doing that is this autonomous car sharing entertainment thing.

Right. Because, yeah, go ahead. Well, it just seems like what they want to do is build movie theaters on wheels. Yeah. You get in the car, you like, call up a car and you sit down in it and like, I don't know, LATV plays at you. Right. There's some sort of entertainment deal that's like maybe subsidize the ride or, you know, there's some sort of maybe you want to get in the ABC car. Well, the other problem is what you say is definitely making a hashback.

If we're picking, if the future of transportation is like major American television networks and you have to request the like. The Big Bang Theory car. Mom, I want a limo to go to the prom. You're getting the Big Bang Theory car because that's all I can afford. You have to take the Bazinga. It's awful. Yeah, that's really bad. It's terrible.

The dancing with the Stars car. But once they say we're making a hatchback. Now, we could make a hatcher. We are going to make a hatchback. Then all anybody's going to be saying is when's a hatchback coming? You're late. Where's a hatchback? Can you have a timeline?

I mean, this is the problem. They already gave a time. They said we have a car out in a couple of years. I mean, this is the problem with hype. I mean, this is them. They played this game for as long as they could, which was over the last 18 months, you know, being really coy about what they're going to.

I mean, they knew it they were doing with this entire process as far up to like this week where it was like, we're going to give an interview finally with some of our lead designers in our factory and we're going to do it in front of this. By the way, there's just people carrying huge ladders just walking all around you. We're going to do it in front of this like car under a tarp

and we're going to like make a mention of it, but we're not going to, and it's like, is that our car? And it's, I mean, they've been very careful about, like, how they've done this. Right. Anyway, so that was, like, the big one. So it's not catching up to them. And then what happened, this thing about entertainment car is just super interesting to me because the same day, uh, what was it, Volvo showed off, like, a rotating dashboard.

Yeah. Yeah. So, you could, like, basically the glove compartment on the passenger side. What was that thing called? Was it called the knee anvil? Right. Well, it's unclear whether they think that you're going to have a passenger. or in that seat.

Oh. So you're the driver of an autonomous car and then you push the button and the thing flips up and the steering wheel proceeds and you're like lean back and watch the scene screen.

Right. But so that thing Jordan and Chris were telling me has like been around this idea that you're going to flip up this to your train. It looks super fucking awesome sci-fi. Like when you're a little kid

and you're like in a car and you have no idea how anything works and like how space works and you're like I wish I could push a button and the whole dashboard would flip up and the hood would fly away.

That's why when they showed off the first version of this in the fall Jordan, like, one of the first videos he did for us was sitting in that first version of, like, where the seat moves and, like, dash moves and all this stuff. But, like, that, I mean, what we saw yesterday was, like, this cool animation of, like, the interior of a full car, whereas, like, what he got to try out was just the skeleton of, like, inside where it was just the seat, just the dash, and nothing else. So, like, what was cool about this, so the folding, whatever is, like, awesome.

Like, I literally just watched that GIF for, like, an hour. Yeah. What was interesting about it is what Volvo was actually announced. was a streaming video service that intelligently connects the length, the predicted the length of your commute when you enter your destination. Yeah. And then shows you, pick shows for you, like assembles content for you that fills that amount of time, which is wild.

Yeah. Which is like airlines don't even do that as good as they're trying to do this in a car. Airlines are like, would you like to watch this popular movie that we've ruined in very specific ways? Lauren Grush on the way here tweeted she was watching The Martian And she was like His line goes from like we're going to have to science the shit out of it To like we're going to have to science the ship the spit

spit out of it Yeah It would have matter if it was ship Sorry Anyway I mean That movie is amazing by the way Can we just talk about the Martian for the rest of the show? Lauren good don't go away

Oh she can't hear me Just yell at her Lauren good Don't go away We're going to get done talking about cars, and we're going to, Sean's going to exit. She can't hear me at all. No, yeah. She'll be able to listen to it.

And it is really compelling radio. Yeah. What else happened with cars? A bunch of stuff. And then the last big car thing, I think, was car play. So Fiat Chrysler said it's going to be in Chrysler's Cheaps, whatever. Ford backed all the way down. They're going to do it.

And then Toyota was like, you know what? We're going to license all the Ford stuff, but we're not going to do the car play in Android Auto piece. and my theory is that will eventually impact Toyota sales. Like I think, so, yeah. Our listeners may not know this. Toyota, like, proudly announced yesterday. Yesterday? Today?

Whatever day Toyota did stuff. Let's see, yes, don't worry about it. Just blur, let it blur into what makes. That car sales are higher this year than they have been in forever. Like, record-breaking car sales this year. So, like, there's this industry narrative that the car industry is about to explode because Tesla is going to disrupt it and Uber is going to disrupt it. and Uber's going to disrupt it.

Meantime, people are buying the shit out of cars. Yeah. And I think if you're out there trying to buy a car, you are an idiot if you're not buying a car play an Android Auto car. Yeah, I mean, well, you've had a lot of experience with them too, and it's like... We've all had experience with bad infotainment systems,

so we know that something better needs to be on the horizon. It's just CarPlay and Android Auto are, you know, they're desirable, but they're still, like, far from being good. What about a roll of duct tape and an iPad? You know, that might be a better experience. Let me tell you this. There's a long-running joke that, you know, someday, you know, Microsoft is going to put windows in your car, and then your car is going to blue screen.

Well, Android Auto needs to be rebooted. Sometimes it needs to be rebooted when you're doing 70 miles an hour down the road. Oh, you mean, you don't mean like conceptually rebooted. You mean actually, actually. Actually. I thought you'd just been saving up that burn for like weeks. No, you actually need to unplug your phone, re-start your phone, because the thing won't accept a voice command. Wow.

This is where we're at. And CarPlay is not much better if it's better at all. So like to say to base your entire, you know, maybe it might be a $25,000 purchase decision on Android Auto and CarPlay, I don't think a lot of people are going to get there for quite a while. But there will be a point where you are going to want those and they are going to be a must-have feature. And I do think down the road, Toyota might see the folly of its ways. No, I mean, there was this report from GM dealers like in late December that was like, people are coming in to our dealerships and asking for these cars.

And GM dealers are now ordering, when they place their wholesale orders, they're no longer ordering GPS units in the cars. They're just ordering the Android Auto and CarPlay. I went to the Ford press conference this morning at like 7, 630. It's really early. And they did a bunch of things. You know, it talks to Amazon Echo Now, and they announced a bunch of other stuff.

But they said that, like, Ford Sync, something like 80 plus percent of their customers said that Ford Sync factored into their purchase decision. Yeah. And so, like, they care. Which is crazy because, like, Ford Sync was not good. It's garbage. There's a new version of it. One of the better ones. But the crazy thing with the Ford thing is.

But Ford Sync is just GPS. They're just saying, like, having a map in my client. No, it's an app platform. It does all this stuff. But when you collapse it to what the consumer wants, they want the nicer steel. with GPS. Right. And something that connects your phone fast.

That's one problem. Obviously, you get to play the media that's on your phone. You use the apps like Spotify that's on your phone. You have your contacts on your phone. And, you know, you're so used to using Google Maps for everything anyways. You can now have Google Maps in your dashboard. Do you around people used to put, like, Mac minis. Yeah.

In cars. You know, there's like the whole hobbyist thing of, like, putting an iPad mini in the dash or a Nexus 7, like, in the dash. Or a giant 17-inch tablet, like in a Tesla. The crazy thing about the Ford event. And, like, a lot of the car stuff that I heard is like, oh, man, traditional car makers are super defensive. Ford spent, like, 20 minutes, be like, yo, we make our self-driving cars, we make autonomous cars. We've been working on this shit.

We've been around forever, guys. And you know what? We're going to partner with another company to do ride sharing or something like that. We're really into it. It's going to be a big, important company. It's really awesome. And we'll tell you later. Yeah.

That was literally how they ended their press conference. Well, I mean, they do have the advantage. They do have the advantage of, I mean, tech companies, I guess, have this too. But, like, they can spread this out. I mean, they have Detroit Auto Show next week. Yeah, yeah. They don't need to rush. They've done, all these big traditional carmakers have done, like, the first step in saving face,

which is, like, getting themselves out there and, like, admitting that they're behind the curve. And, like, apparently that's not affecting sales because, like, they're able to write the ship in some way. So, like, now they're just trying to, like, let's make progress without making too much. much progress, but we need to catch up. Right. Yeah. The fourth thing was, we have one foot in today and one foot in the future. That's their

thing. Anyways, I really want a focus R.S. That's a line I didn't expect in 2016. I will buy a Ford if it has sync. I mean, we're sponsored by Ford, man. I get it. I just really want that Ford. You know, I've got a garage to

park it in. Who doesn't love a Mustang? America's car. What was weird to me was like I was sitting there watching that Faraday. Bitch and Camaro. That fair day event last night. And to me it was fun because I guess I understood what was going on. And so it was fine to me. Like I love concept cars.

And like it gives me, it gives you a lot of things to think about. It gives a company a lot of things to think about. It may not ever really matter too much. But like, you know, it does in some ways. And like they have, the reason that that exists is because they have talent behind it. They've been, they like Tesla, like Apple, like Google, any company that's involved in electric cars. or in self-driving cars right now is just like working out of this

like increasing pool of talent where they're just stealing it off of everybody else. So like it's a sign of like what they're, what they've got and like what they're growing. And so I was really excited to see that even though we don't really know what Faraday Future is going to be. Well, it's like what right next to it is like

the same day GM invested half a billion dollars in Lyft to build self-driving cars. Right. Which is the same idea. Yeah. What they need to do is get Netflix on board. Yeah. And be like, we...

Instead of cloning Uber. Get the Netflix of Netflix. It's funny because I've spent the last couple years thinking about how... It's a streaming service. There's streams other streaming service instructions here? I spent the last couple years thinking about how like... That makes no fucking sense. How like Elon Musk's whole thing with Tesla, if you buy into like his take on Tesla is that like

he doesn't necessarily want it to be the car that everybody owns, which is why he's okay backing down the estimates of how much they're going to sell every year. Yeah. His thing is like... He wants to disrupt the industry. He wants to make the car that makes everybody else think, oh, shit, we need to make that car, we need to make something electric. So I've been enjoying watching that ripple spread through this industry. And so if it does really get boiled down to like the Netflix car or the CBS car and these

entertainment companies end up mixing into it. That is the worst possible. Yeah, that's dark. Can you imagine like, I don't even know. We're not even at CES day one and it's dark. Like a VH1. Monster cables to get involved in. cars.

Monster cables? Yeah, like, what's the most evil company at CES? Oh. What's the most evil company at CES? Oh, God. How much time do you have? We got to talk with a bunch of other companies. Yeah, we got a lot more.

And that was the other really quick thing that I'll say about Faraday Future was like, I sat there last night and I was like, wow, we've been right for a couple years. This is a car show. Yeah. It's a car show. But then today happened and I was like, oh, wow.

We had a lot of like old tech stuff going on. Like I was sitting in. There's so many cars today. There are. Volkswagen 4. Ford, but we... For today. Toyota.

Toyota. Volkswagen is really exciting, too. We haven't even talked about that. But, like, I don't know. I felt like most of the day, I was like, oh, man, we've got some... We've got some consumer tech here. Yeah. We've got cameras.

We've got action cameras. We've got... Gadgets are back, man. Well, gadgets are back. It's gadgets and cars. Revenge of the gadgets. The gadgets are the gadgets. The gadgets is awakened.

The gadgets is brought to you by Disney and ABC car. You know what's great is when you watch a Disney movie in a Mustang. Think about it. Oh, God. That's your ad reading. three years. You realize that right. When I'm driving my robot Mustang, I like to

settle in with a great wreck-it-Ralph session. I don't know what that means. Hey, Lauren Good. Lauren, do you want to come on the podcast? Lauren's going to kill me. So back, Lauren Good is here. Dan took off, pieced out. Hey, everybody. I'm Dan

C-Furt. Yeah, just do that. That's all Dan does. He just announces his name dryly over and over again. And then leaves. So I don't know if everybody knows. My role at CS is like largely, like I'm a dance. Ceremonial. Yeah.

Yeah. I walk into things. I walk into meetings. I do. I go to meetings. My favorite fucking thing. But Lauren and Dieter and Sean are just running around looking at stuff for two days. So what have you been seeing so far?

First off, let me just say I love how you say that. Is one of those roles is like way more desirable than the other. You say like running around and looking. at stuff, like you would rather be doing that more than anything in the world. That is all I want to do. I love learning on looking at stuff. And I'm thinking, oh, I would like to go to your dinners that you're going to. That sounds pretty amazing.

I mean, there. But in either case. Oh, what, I eat delicious food. I drink fine wine. You actually had dinner. Yeah. You're wearing a very nice suit. Yeah, because you've got to look good for these, like, you know, these are masters of the universe.

You really have to make it a case for yourself right now in this argument. No. Yeah. I've been carrying around a backpack and dressing like, I don't know, I'm going into some type of military mission or something. So my first years at CS, I definitely wore like a tech vest with like hundreds of pockets full of SD cards and like USB cables. Yeah, I got like, I don't even want to know.

I basically looked like a remote charging station. Oh, man, Lauren just pulled out all the crap out of her pocket. I got more. There's more. I'm pulling gadget after gadget out of her pockets. All right. So, well, whatever. I think that you, the running around looking at stuff,

That's what the people want to hear about. The people. The people. The tens of thousands of verge cast, DeVotes, who are willing to suffer through how tired we are to listen to the show. But no, there's like a bunch of stuff, and we had a bunch of press conferences today. So yesterday was, you saw much a new wearable stuff. Yeah, I'm on the wearables beat this year.

I started out this morning by going straight to the Fitbit press conference first thing in the morning. The Fitbit blew up this. Everybody wanted to look at the Fitbit. Yeah, I mean, Fitbit's an ideal. this. Oh, yeah. I was too... That's okay.

You were running around looking at things. Exactly. Why is the Fitbit so good? Fitbit is... Fitbit is... I don't think Fitbit's getting quite enough credit for the kind of year they had in 2015. 2015 was a major year for Fitbit. The company went public.

That was a big deal. So part of going public means they now have quarterly earnings reports. And in those quarterly earnings reports, we were finding out some really interesting stuff about the company. Like, they make money and they sell millions of devices and stuff like that. And they also just have... Little things. Just little things like startups in San Francisco don't always do or have. And they have this amazing brand recognition.

They really are the Kleenex of the fitness tracking. Yeah, of the fitness tracking world. And so they've got all that going for them. And everyone's been waiting to see what is the next fit that going to be because last time they came out with something new was early last year around this time. And so it's the Blaze. It's like this new fitness smart watch that's not a smart watch because it doesn't run third-party apps.

but it has a display for the first time. Is this a surge run, a third-party apps? It does not. No, I mean, the surge is really, the surge is the mother of all FitBits, as I like to call it. It's a GPS-equipped fitness watch, has long battery life, it has a display. It tracks a bunch of different activities, and it will show, Fitbit does show you smart notifications from the phone. Oh, no. So you can't wait to review this Intel Wearable.

I'm going to put this one on right with my other ones. Oh, my God. How many are you wearing right now? I'm wearing. I will say we were at, wait, is that, so what's, what's the one on your wrist? I don't know if Lauren's going to come back from her first CES Verge experience. This is actually my seventh, but it is my first with the verge, and it's just, it's a, it's a totally different CES. But, you know, so this is the pebble time round.

Right. It's dead. This is the new Under Armour Band, one of the other new, new, entry trackers we've seen. We can now at the embargoes. We were at a wearables briefing yesterday. And I was wearing it. got lots of attention, obviously, from the people there. But people were loving that she was wearing a pebble time round.

You were fascinated by it. Yeah, a lot of people ask me, why do you wear the pebble? Yeah. And I say, well, in an event like this, you just want to wear something that has the longest battery life possible. Yeah. Because you don't want to have to charge something else every day. My Apple Watch died on the first day, and I have not yet recharged it. Well, you recently performed like a social thought experiment on everybody, right?

Didn't you, like, go with it dead for two months or something? No, it was like six months. I just wore a dead Apple Watch for like months and no one noticed. That's great. The only person I noticed repeatedly is... Oh, sorry. Oh, we're doing Fitbit. Oh, yeah.

Okay, so the Fitbit Surge was last year's big Fitbit announcement, and there were a couple other ones as well. This Fitbit, the Fitbit Blaze, is a fully featured fitness watch like the Surge. It'll track a bunch of different stuff, but it doesn't have GPS. It also happens to be the first Fitbit with an LCD color display. Fitbit's never done color displays before. So in like a weird way. it's inching a little bit more towards a real smart watch in terms of its looks, the aesthetics of it.

But it's not quite a real smart watch because it doesn't have third-party app support, which some people might like, actually. But it's also not quite a full-featured fitness watch because it doesn't have GPS. So it's sort of this weird in-between thing. I mean, I wrote a whole thing on Theverge.com about it that it's a little bit harder to categorize, I think, than some of the other FitPits. What's crazy because people love FitPi. Like, I think you've written. it, like Obama just wears a surge.

Dude loves that thing. And he was just wearing it recently again in a video with the Seinfeld video, the comedians and cars. And it's like, the president is just like endlessly wears a Fitbit surge. And I know all kinds of people who wear charges, charge HRs. And you're right. They're like the Kleenex. It's like, you're going to buy a Fitbit thing or a Fitness thing.

You just kind of end up buying a Fitbit. Right. And then the Blaze is like, well, first of all, you saw it in person. In the photos, it looks hard. Horrifically ugly. It is not a very attractive. Like it has a giant bezel. It kind of looks like the first basis.

Yeah. Oh, that is. Which I will say, I'm not going to lie. It's like super angular. Samsung's first wearable. The Samsung gear fit? The one that was like a band? Yeah.

No, like the watch. I don't know. The very first Galaxy gear you mean? Yes, yes. Galaxy gear and the basis are two of the more common things I see on the New York City subway. Really? It is bizarre how much.

much I've seen the basis. Oh, the first galaxy that gave a ton of those away for free, though. Well, that's why. But the basis? Like, who was like, man, got I have that basis. And I mean, Intel bought that. Intel bought that. And, like, forgot it away. They were like, no. I received a free basis at the code conference, like, two years ago. Yes, I did as well. And people, actually, a friend of mine tried to, like, buy one recently and she couldn't. And she said, do you still have that basis from the code conference? And I was like, yeah, you can have it. Good luck with the updated software for that thing. Well, no, because Becky is like, I want, she's like, I want one with heart rate.

I was like, try this basis. And she looked at me. She was like, I want to search. Or like straight up. No, she wanted to charge. Oh, she wanted to be a charge HR. Yeah. And I was like, really?

She's like, I know what it's called. I want that one. I was like, damn it. Yeah. I can't voice this other garbage. Yeah. I mean, the new one has optical heart rate sensors too. So it doesn't have GPS, but it does have the heart rate tracking.

But it's actually a popout tracker, which if you don't see it in person, you can't really Is that what's a huge? Well, it's a frame, right? It's a frame around a square tracker. So you pop the square tracker out. There are actually gaps between the top and the bottom of the frame and this thing. So you pop it out and then you could maybe pop it into a nicer band, like a leather band in frame or a different frame, a rose gold frame coming down the road.

Yeah. If you want to dress it up a little bit. I'm a little, I don't know, we're going to have to wait until we really test this thing before we make our full assessment. I mean, I guess the one thing that Fitbit has going for it is that because there are these millions of people that have bought FitBits, maybe some people already tied to their software. And so if you're already sort of sucked into the Fit system, then... The big decision to not integrate with, like, Apple Health or whatever.

They don't integrate. Apple Health or Google FIP. And then they got kicked out of the Apple Store. That's right. Which is, like, kind of, like, if you just think about that whole thing, and then they're still huge and popular, like that kind of money. I don't know. But it's, if you're asking, like, why are we talking about FitBid so much? This was literally the top post on our site all day yesterday.

Was it really? Yeah. Oh, that's great. And I think it's crazy that a company like Fitbit just has. this insane, loyal, like, everyone just, who it has Fibit is like, I want the new best one or I want to upgrade or I want to wear a band. When I always think of Fibbitt is like the commodity, like, it's the little thing that you clip to your pants and like, lose.

Oh, that's so cute in 2010. Now it's like all about strapping things. Yeah. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. I have to say the most interesting thing that I think I've seen. To your wrist. Wait, let's talk about the Intel one.

What is this? What is this? So Intel at their keynote, keynote today. Intel's keynote today, it was the grand CES keynote, which traditionally Microsoft did at Qualcomm had an insane one. It's like a big blow. We're going to show you the future. And Intel had the best press conference of all last year,

so they got the keynote this year. It's going to be awesome. And instead, their CEO, Brian Grzanich, was on stage for like three hours. It was a long one. It was not the kind of guy. And other companies that typically go along went short this year, so it felt even longer.

He could not hold the stage for that long. So anyway, this thing has Intel Curion at their tiny little computer chip thing that can track all sorts of positioning data. And so it lights up, and we were supposed to wave our wrists around while... They were taught a dance. We were taught a dance that we didn't do. The entire audience was like, yeah, we're not going to dance. There is an instruction card.

Who is the guy that played? So then the musicians also used them to, like, play invisible instruments. I don't even know what you're saying. Yeah. Okay. My brain is not processing anymore. Dieter's doing the thing where he live-logged it so he wasn't there. Yeah, yeah.

His brain went away. He was like a typing machine. Intel makes a chip called the Curie. Yes, I'm familiar. They can track all kinds of stuff. They announced it last year. This year they're like, we're putting the curie in stuff now. So you can put it in a snowboard and it can like tell what trick you're doing because

the curie. And so they put it in this little wristband. This is what Taylor Swift did a while ago. and we could like clap and make a thing happen on a screen or we could they could like make it light up in sync with during to the music while we waved our arms in a certain way and it was a very weird thing to see a keynote for CES considering that this idea has been around in music not just Taylor Swift like this idea of like wear something or put something on your phone that will enhance the audience

participation by turning it into like you know a fourth sense you know like there are apps and other wearables like this that people have like downloaded and gotten upon entering concerts for the last couple years now where it's like it'll sync up with the music like Dan Deakin did this like a couple years ago in like smaller shows and then it spread to like big arena shows and so Intel was like putting a lot of attention on just because it has curie in it it's like this thing look at how cool this is we're going to end our keynote on this they have reputation for showing things off at CES that really are true prototypes and yeah and a lot of cases don't come to market. So what did they say anything about wearables we'll actually see this year?

The New Balance promised to make an Android wear watch. Oh. Wait. That was the whole thing. That was the news. Oh. New Balance is 3D printing souls for shoes now, too. They've been better if they're just 3D printing souls.

Yeah. So the one thing that I will give Intel credit for it. Yeah. Mine is dead. Last year they showed that drone that could. The battery died. Last year they showed the drone that could dodge trees. You, you have, there's no light in your eyes.

Okay. I've 3D printed you with... You're right, you're right, though, because this was the one thing that... This was the one thing that actually built on. You can't 3D print a non-existent thing. Oh my God, Dieter doesn't have a soul. See, you need one.

Well, let's go over... We're going to Cury! Let's go over to the Sands. Whip it up! And find some 3D printing companies. Let's please say Casey Newton around tomorrow to 3D printing companies and asking they can print souls. Have you?

noticed when Casey is doing like the big video thing, he talks like a 1940s gangster. Yes. Really? Yes. I don't want to do an impression of it. If you 3D bring me a soul, like he does it.

The Wittings Activity Poppe. I still need to watch that video that you guys did. This is one of those things where people are going to watch this video and they're going to say this is just not funny and we're so loopy right now that we think. No, I've had two days of tweets from people who are like, what are you going to get drunk

and make an ass of yourself on a podcast? And we did it. We're here for you. Medina continue. I'm sorry. We so rudely interrupted you. The tel gets credit for the drone they showed off last year with a real sense that could like dodge trees and while it follows you. They are, they found a company to actually make it production for under two grand. And they had it on stage. And like it works. Yeah. So like whereas last year it was like they set it up in this big net area and it was dodging like buildings that were made out of like paper.

This year they set it up in a big net area and it was dodging trees that were made of paper. Right. It wasn't the idea that. But it was a more impressive dodging. Yeah, yeah. To feed the 3D printer. Right? Weren't the photos taken or the photos of the souls taken with?

Oh, my God. It was a ghost camera. Intel made a ghost camera. They began taking photos. They can stick a tablet in your face and go like this for a couple of seconds, and then your face gets pasted onto the body of the main character in Fall Off. It's funny because until you said pasted, it sounded like you were going to make a joke about looking at souls. You can see your aura

It's a strong one within you Intel whiffed their keynote Super hard I think everybody went their fucking That was bad The only two keynotes that were good In my opinion so far Were sections of two keynotes

Okay It was Samsung and LG Yeah When they started talking about washing machines And refrigerators Yes Like I have never I mean you want to talk about Swagger

Like the dude from like LG's like He literally was like He's like, we are leading this industry trend, the game-changing industry trend, towards black, stainless steel. And it was like, no one else operated in the same headspace. I have this theory.

And he was like, fucking mic drop. I have this theory about these appliance guys at Samsung in LG. Imagine you're an appliance executive, right? I imagine every day. You live a super boring life. They look, they're all super fit for some reason. They have great suits. Yeah, they all have great suits.

A dude from Samsung has that really nice pinning. That's what I'm saying. It looks like that guy that's going to slip you a $20 bill at your graduation party and be like, you're welcome. Yeah, imagine. Imagine these guys outside of CES and like the coolest they can be. They can't be cool at all. They go to Sears, right? They go to meetings with like, Kenmore.

They're in there, man. That's boring and lame. Those guys, can you imagine the guys on the other side of the table at Sears? Like, the dude, the Samson dude's coming. Like, everybody comb your hair. Shine your shoes. If they have that kind of cool and swagger on stage at CES, Imagine what happens when they go meet with Kenmore.

No, I think we have to start going to like appliance conventions and just seeing how like how throwback. I'm sick that week. You have to go to the appliance petcom. Oh, boy. I'm going to die. I'll say you have to run around and do you. I'll make it fun.

No, but the Samsung smart fridge, this is so stupid. The family hub. It was the first thing that leaked out of CES. Yes. And the first post in our site that had an immediate traffic spike. Yeah. And it's like a touchscreen. It's like a 21.5 inch touch screen.

It has like Android controls at the bottom. It has like a home button. Yeah. Well, it's Tyson. But like. And when you're traveling. I feel like if I said even to our audience, it has ties and controls with bottom. People like, what does that even mean?

They like pull over their cars and start. Um, one of the car would pull over itself. Is that when you're traveling away from your connected fridge and you're, you're in someplace with a dumb fridge, you can get on your phone and you can send a little message to your family back home on the fridge screen. So when someone's like in the kitchen late at night, they get totally freaked out. It's just your face. Also, like, but like also in reality, most people have phones.

Like, why would you be like, please go to the kitchen? Like you're like texting. Let's face your son. You're like, I need you to go to the kitchen. It's like the basis of a black mirror episode where you're like sending this heartfelt message and like your family has, like, you think they're home, but like, like, sending your husband, like a dick pick is out there? I mean, like, immediately, right?

Like, if you were the sort of person who's, like, buying, like, a $40,000 fridge, you're like, you know what? Gonna put my junk on it. Is that how much it is? I don't know. I'm just assuming it's an enormous. They're really expensive. The LG one has a sensor in the bottom.

When you walk up to it with your foot, it opens itself for you. That's actually pretty cool. And LG did one a few years ago here. I don't know if it ever, I think it actually is on the market, where it would, like, chill your beer. in wine in like eight minutes. Yeah, no, they've all got like that. A special chill drawer.

I'm assuming. Are that not new anymore? Am I that behind the times with the refrigerators? Netflix and chill drawer. We're all behind. That doesn't mean anything. Not at all.

Wait a minute. The Samsung fridge probably has a Netflix app. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You can watch Netflix. And then... Does Tize them have a Netflix app? Yeah. See, this is the problem.

This is... Look, guys, this refrigerator fragmentation has gone too far. How are they going to get developers the smart fridge is awesome you it'll it can mirror the TV show on your Samsung smart TV in the kitchen can you read tweets I don't know I only want I want to check what about snap chat and I want to tweet about it immediately if it's gone bad you can pull up the app on your phone and get the picture the picture of the inside of your fridge from the last time the door was closed I'm sorry that first world problem is

not big enough for me I mean it's kind of it's just so like this what I mean the appliance guys like every other part of the Samsung thing was like we have invested in the UHD logo is the other partners in the U.S.D. Oh, Samsung was super angry about how they are the only ones who understand how to make super U.HD TVs and everybody else's SUHD is garbage. Like everyone like not like I'm going to go ahead and contrast that but that level of confidence and actual products displayed with our friends at Sony who began building up an announcement for their UHD television only to back it off by saying and we are

announcing the industry's first U. U-HD logo. What? And they displayed a logo, and that was the answer. And they're like, this logo will teach consumers that they can trust in Sony's U-H-D. And it was like, you announced a picture? What? It's a picture.

Like, you're just going to glue it on things. The Sony one was so, so deeply confused. They just hung out. What, did this show, I'm so tired. Did they show anything? They showed a camcorder. So they, lots of 4K camp quarters. Oh, I was going to say, does it work with VHS?

No, I mean, it was like... Does it work with 8mm? Sony's like my favorite, uh, favorite company of live block here. Because they usually have, like, I was saying, telling a story earlier, uh, to the staff, not to the people listening to this. I'm going to tell you the story now. Um, sorry, it's just brain. Just not working.

Uh, words. Uh, but like five years ago, Sony had like Taylor Swift play. And like, everything was in 3D. And then there was like, four... And like, this year, like, cause rolled on stage. and he was like, let's just talk about CS. And then he would, like, they just brought out some partners. Like, they're like, here's the president of screen gems, a Sony picture company.

And literally, Mike was sort of the president of Sony Electronics was like, so let's get to the question that everybody's asking themselves. And everyone was like, yes. Like, what new prototype camera have you been using? He's like, why are Sony cameras the best? The guy was like, they are the best? And it was like, are you guys just like browing out a little bit? And then he left.

That was it. He didn't actually answer the question. You know, he was just like their best. You know, like, we can hang him up. We can, like, move him around. We can shoot things with them. He's like, we make cool sensors. Yeah, and then they brought out a guy from YouTube.

Capture Souls. Every ScreenGems movie, actually, if you watch it in a black light. You lose your soul. It's just souls. Especially if you watch it in the self-driving car that just came to pick you up. The Screen Jems car that's bringing you to. Oh, my God. It's the darkest timeline.

I know. I'm so scared about it. I could have nightmares. Anyway. God. And then they brought out a guy from YouTube, and they're like, and he was like, YouTube is growing. Everyone loves YouTube.

And Mike Sto was like, you know what? YouTube is pretty great. Who's the guy from YouTube? Lucas something. Okay. But they just talked about YouTube for a while. Like they didn't talk about what Sony was doing with YouTube. Oh.

They just literally discussed YouTube and how cool it was. And the guy left. And Sony was like, that's the kind of stuff we like to see. What? Yeah. And like literally no products for now. They announced a 4K camera, a camcorder, the hottest product. category at CES.

I bet David Pierce $100 that he couldn't get the headline camcorders are back into Wired tomorrow. So here's looking at you, bud, if you could pull that off, you got money waiting for you. They never went away. He doubled me up. He said if he could get camcorders or lit as fuck

200 bucks, so we'll see. Anyway, so he announced that. They announced, I know, headphones and speakers. Walkman. Record player. Oh. Yeah, record player. Record player is like the hottest category at CS this year.

We're sitting right near a record player company. Yeah. Yeah, like Technics. Panasonic brought the Technics brand back. It's like the legendary SL-1200. They put out like super expensive. Retro is back. Yeah, so Retro's back.

And then Kodak is putting out like a film camera. Yeah, the Super 8. So like retro gadgets are like having a real moment here. Yeah. Kodak's not only putting out a 8 millimeter film camera, Kodak's making something, right? Well, yeah. I mean, they're like, they're like Polaroid over the last couple years

where they just are like, oh, you'll take our brand, give us some money like yeah put it on whatever that object looks cool i read something in the new york times did a fantastic story on um kodak last year and there's something like at one point kodak had 145 000 employees and now they're down to like 5 000 well that was the in the 40s and 50s kodak was apple yeah and uh they no longer i mean they make a fraction of the amount of film that they once made and the film that they do make now they make to sell specific to like certain Hollywood studios that they have deals with and that's the only reason why they make the film.

And that's 35 millimeter and 8 millimeter is even harder to find. Yeah, I saw some on B&H today actually. I was poking around after I saw that the Super 8 was coming back out. And getting it developed is even harder. And getting it's expensive. I shot some on a project a couple years ago. It's somewhere between like $25 and $50 a roll, right? Yeah.

It's closer to 50 and then getting it process is another 50 to 100 and then getting it digitized is like another 50 to 100. So Kodak has. said, I believe that they will do the digitizing if you send your film to them to be processed. It will give you some type of digital copy that you can project after you use the super TV. Sony had like a similar, it's totally different. Sony's not going to do anything for you. They're just going to, they're just going to show you their friends. But their record player is like a high-res audio record player. It's a very

nice record player. And then it plugs into your computer over USB and there's an app that like converts your records into high-res digital files for their like library of high-res digital audio goods and they're like it's all the convenience of digital plus the thing you love about vinyl and it's it's just funny that codex thing is like use all this like ritualistic analog stuff and then we'll give you the digital files you want anyway and I it's it's kind of a weird I'm not sure that that's the answer like that's the old answer right like I think people like record players because there's all this like ritualistic stuff and they're not like

man I wish I had these files on my phone like they have them anyway yeah that's true like if you're listening to an album on Spotify like you just have you don't I don't know it's very like that part of the retro gadgets thing is like I don't think the companies know why people like them so like cause her eye today

or they do know and they're just blatantly tapping into nostalgia I was like I asked cause for I today I was like why do you think there's a vinyl like there's a boom in vinyl sales like people are buying vinyl records again and there's a bunch of turntables here at CES and I was like why do you think this is happening. He's like, I don't know, like nostalgia. And he like, kind of

went down to like millennials or crazy road. He's like, you know, these millennials they like the rituals and like the, and I was like, you don't actually know. Like, I think it's like Spotify kind of sucks as a music experience. And it's like you love bands. You want to pay them. You don't want a CD. So you like, you buy this.

It's like, there's all this other stuff about it. And like, I don't think like shooting film is like what you want to do is shoot film, send it back, send it away. And then receive back. Get a digital copy back. Yeah, like an SD card.

Yeah. And I think that's the only way you can edit it. I mean, no one... We got a wrap. She knows you know how to edit film. Yeah. Because of the saw that's buzzing. Oh, we need to talk about the bra.

Let's talk about the bra. We can talk about another time. Another time. Are you going to be on tomorrow? It's good tunes. They're sawing. We're going to die. We're going to die.

I have a... Wait, Dieter, I have one note here. Well, Lauren, say two sentences about the bra. And then I have a note here. All it says here, all I've written down is is Deeter has a lot to say about Samsung. So I want to hear about the bra, and then I want to hear just a taste of what that is. We can pick it up tomorrow.

All right. I've been wearing a connected sports bra. What? And it's actually pretty cool. Yeah. I'm not wearing it now, but for working out. Yeah. Yeah.

But we'll have plenty more on that. We're going to do a booth video with the company behind it. Wow. There's a story on Theverge.com about it right now. Right now. Yes. It's 11 p.m. It's, um.

Yep. Uh, I wrote that one, like, I don't know, like one in the morning the other night or something. Wow. So you know it's going to be good. Yeah, but I was working out in the smart bra all weekend before I came here. And I was like, oh, whatever. It's just like a heart rate strap that's built into a bra. But it's cool.

So it's called the Om Signal bra, the Ombra. And it measures your heart rate, your breathing rate, your heart rate, your heart rate variability, your overall activity. But the cool thing is that it pairs with an app for like live monitoring while you're working out. So you keep the app open and you see like, you actually see your heart pulsing. and like this, I don't know, in either case. But then the best part about it is, because it knows your activity levels, it tells you how hard you worked out after the fact.

And I found out that, like, I think I work out really hard and you really don't. Yeah, I worked out for an hour on Sunday, and I thought, Sunday morning, and I thought, because I'm a rock star. And then I looked at the, at the Om Signal app that was wearing the sports bra, and it basically said you worked out

for like 15 minutes at the level you should have been. And five minutes were warm up. and 40 minutes were junk. This is the new theme of wearables that make you feel bad about yourself. Well, yeah, is that something you hadn't been getting? You wear a lot of stuff, fitness stuff, and you've tested it in that way. But if you do, if you go for like... Is that something you haven't gotten from those?

Well, yeah, I mean, if you hit 10,000 steps or you go for a three-mile run or something like that, you feel a sense of accomplishment. You're like, okay, I got my daily activity in, and I'm going to be a healthy person and stave off disease and all this stuff. But if you're not actually working at heart and getting your heart rate up to a certain level, and you don't have anything to tell you that, then that's a whole different thing. Like, a lot of people don't really know

what heart rate zones they should be in and what they should be doing. And so, I mean, this is next level. This is, like, this is beyond just, I need to get off the couch, right? Right. This is, like, for people who maybe are like, are like, okay, I'm ready to train.

So I just found that really interesting. And I'm definitely going to have to test it a lot more. This was based on one weekend of using it, but I was intrigued by it. Yeah. I'm telling you wearables to make you feel bad. That was the whole theme of, Unveiled the history for me.

Really? Yeah, it was like, like every wearable is like, your hair is falling out. Let's shoot lasers at it. It's true. It's true. Like, now there are smart scales. I don't know. But there are like scales now that you step on.

The scales are like, oh. Yeah. You still have 17 pounds to go. Yeah. And then you're like, you're like, no. Don't send that weight to the app. Don't do it. And then it's like sinking.

Yeah. And you're like, it's already there. And then you open your phone. and your phone's like, you're fat. Well, no, it's like, as people, we're not allowed to say that to each other anymore. So we've pushed it off to the robots. Absolutely. The robots are like, you could stand to lose.

Shame wearables. Shame wearables. No, we, Casey and I were looking at one called this sculpt yesterday that you, like, you spray water on yourself and you hold this, like, Bluetooth electric thing on you, and it tells you what your muscle adequacy is or muscle quality. Because one of the things is, like, adequate. It's, like, muscle quality? Yeah.

Like, can I just have some? Can it just say some? All of them. You have inadequate muscles and you're lacking a soul. All right. Preview your many thoughts about Samsung. Samsung's smart TV platform, the new stuff, looks really good. Yes, and LG has a partnership's Time Warner cable so the TV is actually a cable box?

Samsung does. It's not a cable box. Oh, Samsung does. They were very vague on the Time Warner thing. If it were the cable box, I would have been flipping out. But it can interact with a guy. in some way. So the thing that they do,

they didn't fully explain how it works. So I'm pretty sure this is how it works. When you plug a peripheral into the TV, it uses HMICC to detect what it is. Because an Xbox says, hey, I'm an Xbox. Yeah. And then you say, okay, I want the Xbox cube on the interface to be here. And as you do that, Samsung's like,

oh, you want to use this Xbox. That's cool. I know it's an Xbox. I'm going to download from the database and the cloud. out in the sky, all the remote control commands for it, and automatically put it on your remote. Yeah. And it just, boom. Like, as soon as you plug that shit into your TV, your remote is programmed for it.

Yeah. That's genius. That's pretty cool. And that's not even like, oh, my God, you solved this insane ecosystem problem. That's just like, oh, you know what? We actually have these Lego pieces. If we just made them talk to each other. And I think that's cool.

I think, like, they deserve to be commended for it. I have no idea if like every other smartphone or smart TV platform that it will be complete garbage in, you know, three months after you buy it. But, you know, as a demo, it's great. It's just interesting because if the core, man, I could talk about it. We should do this tomorrow because I could talk about TV is a lot. But if you're like Samsung represents the realist competition for Apple and TVs. Yeah. Like if you buy the big beautiful 4K OLED Samsung TV and it has a reasonably good operating system,

that is cool to use and does all this stuff for you, integrates actual television, and then it has Netflix and lets you buy movies. Then what Apple needs is like really killer fucking apps for the Apple TV to get you to use it. And that is the piece of the puzzle. But you're putting the Apple TV box in the same category as Samsung's smart TV interface.

In terms of needing to compete to win. Why would you need to buy that thing? Yeah. Why would you need to buy the Apple TV you're saying? When the Time Warner Executive started walking on stage, I was literally vibrating. No, the Time Warner Executive. No, no, no, no.

What's going to happen? I have, oh, this lies. I knew, I knew it wouldn't actually happen. The Time Warner executive walks on a stage every year. But he said, we, he said, they said something, like, they said the word like integration. And I was like, ah, yeah. Ah, ha ha ha. This is the dance.

This is the dance. It's awful. Ha ha. But this year. It never actually happens is what you're saying. It's because they're just, they're bad at it. Huh. It's why.

Anyway, we'll pick this off tomorrow. Tomorrow, on the Verge cast at CES. It's the Vergecast Trader cast With David Pierce, Joanna Stern, and Sam Schaeffer Oh my God That's going to be ridiculous Oh my goodness Is any actual Virgin Play going to be on it?

You Okay Surprise Deere I'm pretty sure it's you Oh Deeter what are you doing tomorrow night Yeah But anyway so that'll be exciting I think that's

And we have two more Thursday and Friday as well So tons of stuff from CS This one surprisingly normal Yeah, you say that, but if you were to listen to it Well, there was the electric sawing that occurred Anyway, that's it Please listen to The Verge, listen to the Verge cast, watch our videos,

subscribe to us on YouTube, definitely subscribe to us on YouTube We're just pumping videos on YouTube It's big props to our video team Yeah, everyone's here, it's a super fun week I love CES, I think it's There's a lot of garbage that gets announced here But there's also like just a lot of fun to be had with toys And isn't that why we do what we do?

Yes. All right. That's it. Thank you guys so much. We'll see you tomorrow.