The Vergecast - CES 2020 roundtable: Concept cars, Quibi, foldables, and more

Episode Date: January 10, 2020

Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, Ashley Carman, and Sean O'Kane highlight the most important, weird, and surprising things The Verge saw at CES 2020. Stories from this episode: Sonos said what every smaller tech company was thinking: working with big tech sucks Amazon’s hardware boss responds to Sonos accusations of stolen technology Sony’s electric car is the best surprise of CES Byton’s 48-inch screen might not be as distracting as it looks Mercedes-Ben’s Avatar-themed concept car with scales Sony surprises with an electric concept car called the Vision-S Segway S-Pod Quibi versus the world Spotify will use everything it knows about you to target podcast ads 2020 might be the year of reasonably okay foldable PCs, maybe Foldable and dual-screen laptops desperately need Windows 10X Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Fold is a $2,499 PC with a folding OLED screen PS5 logo Intel NUC Extreme platform Neon CEO explains the tech behind his overhyped ‘artificial humans’ Samsung’s ‘artificial humans’ are just digital avatars This is Intel’s first discrete graphics card in 20 years, but you can’t buy one Samsung’s Ballie The most promising AirPower alternative isn’t ready yet Royole’s new smart speaker has a wraparound touch display Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today on the Vergecast, Ashley Carman and Sean O'Kane, join the show to talk about everything that's been happening in CS. We get into the Sonos lawsuit against Google, talk about all the car news here, into the streaming wars and Quibi, and some foldable PCs. That's going up on the Vergecast. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need.

Prompt something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data in your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. Hello, welcome to the Verochcast, the flagship podcast of this moment. I'm your friend, Eli. Dieter Bonas here. Egg.

Egg. Egg. Egg. I don't know. Egg. Egg. We foolishly invited Sean O'Kane here.

You're welcome. Ashley Garman's here. I missed the egg memo. I don't really know. We'll get there. There's a lot happening. We're at CS. As you can tell,

by my defeated tone of my voice. We've been in Las Vegas for some time now. Deidon, what would you say about the show? You've been writing about it every day. I have been writing about it every day. It is a show full of a lot of companies that aren't really sure what they should make next.

So they made a lot of ideas. Yeah. Yeah. I love ideas. Yeah. Ideas at fold. ideas that have lights in them, ideas that potentially unfold, but they won't let you try. Ideas that roll around. Yeah. Who knows what's happening. So we obviously did one virtual cast earlier this

week. We talked about all the TV stuff that had come out. A bunch more stuff has happened since. But to me, the thing that's been hanging over the show from the first day, the morning the show floor open. There was a story in New York Times that Sonos is fed up with Google and Amazon. And they're going to sue Google. And then indeed, Sonos dropped a patent lawsuit on Google. Dieter, you want to kind of walk us through the twists and turns of what's going on here? So for years, we've been asking Sonos, hey, what's going on with Google Assistant on your speakers? What's going on? And they're like, you know, you know, and then they finally started demoing it and were like, cool.

It'd be great if, you know, you could have both wake words on at the same time. And they're like, yeah, and then they demonstrated that they could do it. And it turns out that they weren't allowed to because Google said they weren't allowed to. Amazon denies that they said no to this. And Sonos is like, we're tired of getting crushed. And we have a lot of foundational patents for the idea of having multiple speakers and multiple rooms on the same audio system. And so we're suing you for infringing on our patents, Google.

We're tired of being under your thumb and we're tired of you infringing our IP. And they've been negotiating for a while, apparently, but Sonos got tired of it. Yeah. And it's huge. And like the most interesting thing to me, well, there's so many interesting things. But one of the most interesting things to me is the New York Times article explicitly states that they could sue Amazon 2, but they can't afford to take on both giants at once. Yeah, which makes sense to me. Like, just the way lawsuits work, like Google can just keep stringing them out until they're dead.

Right? Like, that's just like a thing. Google has some money to do it. So you go up against Amazon 2. You're fighting two fronts. You're spending literally twice as much money for lawyers. You've got, that's a big risk. Also, I strongly suspect that baked into that was they know what assistance people are using.

and I bet everyone is using Alexa on their son-o speakers and no one's using assistant. And they're like, we'll just go with the one that sucks. How does Sonos afford to fight Google? Seriously? I mean, they have a, I mean, they're a public company. I looked at their financials the day the lawsuit was filed. I mean, they're doing well. They have a bunch of cash in the bank.

I mean, they are selling more units than ever before. The other thing I'll say there real quick is I suspect that Google will not feel completely free to go like scorched earth on Sonos. I just walked through the Google house here at CS and they have a display of like Sonos stuff working with assistant. It hasn't, they haven't like blown it up. I think to me the question is

and actually you've covered like a lot of hardware startups. Can you be like a small or midsize hardware company and survive? Like in Sonos is... That's why I'm like, how are they going to afford this? Right. Because I'm like,

it's already really difficult to make it as a hardware startup without fighting Google who has literally unlimited funds. Yeah. To just decimate. you. Yeah, and I think the thing that's different here, and I, Patrick Spence, the CEO of Sonos has been on this podcast a bunch of times. We've talked a bunch of times. Sonos is like over 15 years old. They came, they launched like 2001 and 2002. They have this portfolio of like 700 patents.

They have loyal customers who are like literally by every product. They've got like happy rich customer. Like Jay Z has like son of speakers in his house. We know this because he says it in the songs. Every rich Silicon Valley executive has son of speakers in the house. So they've got this like base of Goodwill. They do have cash in the bank. They can probably go afford to do this. What really gets me, though, is we did sit down with Sonos and say, well, I want you to allow both waywards.

And they had to, like, shiftily look away and be like, people will be confused about what timer they're setting. Yeah. I mean, that was, like, one of the most interesting things to come out of this story. Yeah. It's just that Amazon and Google won't play nice and will not allow Sonos to put both on this. So the Amazon won't play nice thing is especially interesting because there was like a some sort of correction there.

And also Amazon started this alliance of like, let's have all voice assistants play nice with each other. Like a year and a half ago, I think it was. Actually, I have no idea how long ago was. It could have been a decade ago, the way time works these days. Yeah. And that alliance got launched without Google, Samsung, or Apple, clearly in the middle of all of these backroom fights over what would work with what. Yeah. So I read the lawsuit because, of course, they did.

And so, like, the story is basically like, Sonos wanted to do this thing and have a very, all the assistants work neutrally on its speakers. They approached both companies. They had already done an integration with Google Play Music to work on Sonos. That integration, according to Sonos is like, these are Sonos as allegations. That integration was deeper than their standard one because they let the Google Play Music app, RIP. They bet on a Google service lasting.

They let Google's app control the Sonos speakers directly, which they had never done before. So we had this like deeper partnership and then Google like turn around and launch Chromecast audio and they said, you're infringing our patents. Like, don't do that. I read these patents. I suspect that they've won lawsuits. Like, they sued Denon in like 2014. It took three years. They actually won a jury trial where they said Denon was infringing their like wireless streaming patents. The patents are for things like a Wi-Fi setup interface using a phone, pairing two speakers in stereo and managing the time differential between them. Wireless speakers are hard. So if you have multiple speakers playing and they have slightly different clocks, then you have to

pick one and like sink the clocks and make their as the clocks drift they get resinked so it's like patents on stuff like that it's none of it is like so crazy you'd never think of it like it's patents on solving the problems of i took a speaker out of the box it's got to get on the wifi network here's the flow for how to do it or i have multiple speakers they need to talk to each other how'd you do it like they're they're pretty foundational i think that sonos is leverage here because what they want is behavioral concessions from google they want google to say we you can run both assistants at once. They want Google to say, we will let you extend our platform in ways that we don't let other

partners extend our platform. That's not patent lawsuit stuff, but they don't have the ability like Spotify has in the European Union to sue Apple and say you're anti-competitive. We don't have laws that work that way. So Spotify is like in the EU being like, we can't get on the Apple Watch. We'll just sue you and say that's anti-competitive and Apple will back down. You can't do that here. But if you have this big patent portfolio on all this foundational technology, it's

We're going to sue you on these five patents, two of which we've won. And our settlement, you will agree that we can run both at once. And I think that's kind of the big strategy here. Yeah. It's worth pointing out on the patent stuff specifically. Amazon says it didn't use any of Sonos's technology. And Google didn't initially say that. And then, like, a day later, when I asked them for comment again, they added a sentence saying,

we didn't use any of their technology when we invented our stuff. I think the key here is, like, to make wireless speakers, you have to invent some of this stuff. And, like, some of the solutions, I think are like the solutions. But they invented it first, and they have the patents. And whether or not they did it on purpose, it kind of doesn't matter. It only matters in terms of damages. Like, does your product infringe the patent or not?

I just love that CES always has a B plot. Yeah. Yeah. Every year there's something going on here that isn't going on here that's also definitely going on here. Yeah, absolutely. So I think that the murmurs of all the indie hardware companies here, all the smaller hardware companies here are like,

finally, we hate working with the big companies. They're constantly trying to squeeze us. they're constantly infringing our IP. They're taking our inventions and using them. And we can't do anything about it because we need them to survive. We need to interoperate with Alexa and HomeKit and Google Assistant. We need our app on the iPhone. And Apple decides that they're going to slow down our updates to get apps to because they're mad at us.

Like our product will die. So I think the B plot is like we're really mad at these companies. That was the title of your piece. Yeah. Well, I mean, them making this story come out an hour before the show floor open, guaranteed that everybody in the show floor, instead of saying, so, how's your show, said, so, Sonos, eh? And that changes a lot because a bunch of these little companies

are going to be talking to each other about how they hate being vassals of, you know, Google and Amazon and maybe even Apple, instead of talking about what the coolest gadget was they saw. And if you're a small hardware company and you can't figure out your business, just become a patent troll. Yeah. You are guaranteed to survive. Is there any obvious break in this pattern? Like, is there a chance some sort of,

of like soft bank vision fund for hardware startups like arrives in the next couple years. I'm like, starts bankrolling some of these startups so that they, you know, have a better shot of competing with these giant companies. I think soft bank is weirdly smarter than that. That's a hell of this. I mean, this is your word.

I mean, this is why you cover many pods. Right. I've been very disappointed with the pod technology. Yeah. The pod people have a booth here. I know. They went all in. They have a pretty neon sign.

They've got like weird like, like, like, phone booth things that you walk into so that the scents don't bleed into each other. I walked into it and I had a headache within three seconds. I was just like, damn, business must be really freaking good for scent pods. People who have scent pods.

I'm not hating. I'm just amazed at how good business seems and they can afford the big neon sign. There's a little like MLM around it too. Of course there is. Oh my God. Hey, everyone. I've started selling scent pods.

Use my code. So that's the Sonos story. This obviously like everyone's talking about it. I think Sonos is like playing the game here. Patrick Spencer sets to testify in front of Congress on July 17th. It's Sonos talking about patent infringement. And the other company is Pop Sockets. Wait, what?

Are you going to testify in antitrust hearing? Wait, are you kidding? I did not get that memo. Popsockets is going to be there? Yeah. You're like in it. Wait, why is Popsockets? Because they are very mad.

that Amazon ripped off Pop Sockets. Wow. Wow. I was like, okay, this is the perfect Neli story. Like, Sonos, patents. That's got every little piece. And now it's like phone,

pop sockets is mad at Amazon. With our powers combined. Oh, I am ready now. I mean, that's the best thing is like all these big tech companies are like corralling these weird sort of alliances in like cohorts. Like where like now Pop Sockets has like the same argument as like all birds. Where they're like, yeah, Amazon, this isn't cool.

Like we're now going to teach. This is the thing though that, and that's actually really interesting, I don't know if Pop Sockets has IP or anything around there. I'm going to... Clearly not. Yeah, exactly. And so this kind of speaks to the hardware problem is like, Sonos is smart. They created technology, you know, Magic Leap also is it just, that's top of mind for me right now, has IP, like they invented something, they patented it.

They could become patent trolls if they wanted to. Other hardware companies that do something that is like inventive, Popsocket is invented if it's taken over. People love grips on their phone. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to protect. Yeah. And like, that's, that is the struggle of hardware. And that's why every hardware company now is also.

a software company. I really am dying for the moment on the 17th when like some senator is like, what is a pops? Oh my God, I can't wait for this. It's a socket that pops. Wow. And then like the big speech, it's like,

children across America are struggling to hold their giant phones. And this inventor popped the socket. Like that's like going to happen. Right. Like my shoulder popped out of its socket the other day. And then like just like a random other centers like grandstanding about some other issues. It's going to be great. Amazon is a scourge and an American, like, it's going to be great.

And the pop-sockets guy is going to be there, like, holding his phone with the handle. Look, I'm with you. I think the problem is, can you be a medium-sized company? Like, we should have medium-sized companies. Like, they should be good competition. And right now it seems like you can't be a medium-sized company. The other one I keep always thinking about is ERO, which, like, failed for a variety of reasons.

But, like, when they sold to Amazon, we're like, ah, you could have been it. And it turns out they could not. I mean, I wrote this report about wireless charging tech while I'm here and the air power, the white space where people think they're going to fill in where air power couldn't. And the reality is they want to create these charging pads that are able to charge wherever you put your device. But because of the Apple Wash limitations with Chi, they can't do it, literally. So like Nomad is going to be one of the first companies to release something widely that can do this.

And they're like, yeah, we just can't do it. They're medium-sized company. Yeah. We're like, well. Apple won't. Yeah, we just can't do it. Another good example that sold a few years ago, but it is August. So they have a new smart lock here.

It's a little bit smaller. And they sold to Yale, which is owned by LaGrand. It's like the lock company. Asablois is the big company. Yeah, there it is. Yeah. So it's not like selling out to a huge company, but it's like in order for August to have survived after a bunch of other people started just making things just like them,

they're like, well, we got to get, we got to go somewhere. There's no way that we're going to keep on, keep it on. Here's a plug. I interviewed August CEO Jason Johnson for the show two days ago, and he's going to, you'll stick around your feed, kids. What do the podcaster say? Keep refreshing. Yeah, cool. I don't think we have a good thing.

Okay, we're going to work on it. We're definitely keeping this to the show. Yeah, ring that bell. Wow. Do it. Okay, so this, I want to transition out of Sonos and how hard it is to be a mid-sized company attack. I'm going to do this. I'm going to transition from there to the Sony car.

Oh, wow. Which is, I, Sean, I believe, one of the time. of your favorite things here. So Sony unveiled an electric car. So here's my, my theory about this car. It is so hard for Sony to, like, partner with the big companies and be like, here's a bunch of cool Sony ideas about a car that it was easier for them to just build a car, right? They couldn't be like, Google, we're going to extend Android Auto into this new experience on the inside of a car. We're going to take it and extend it and build it the way that we might be able to do with Android. They couldn't roll up to, I don't know, whatever big purveyor of, like Apple, Apple,

is not going to let them extend car play. BlackBray is not going to let them like or FCA is not going to let them redo you connect. So they had to build their own car because it was easier to like build a functional car and be like this is the Sony vision of a car than actually to partner with any company that supplies that stuff right. Well yeah because there are see I did it there are so many so many of the automakers are sort of picking these sides with some of the tech companies on as far as like the software goes which is one of the big focuses of the Sony car which is the not just the entertainment aspect inside because it's full of screens and stuff, but also the UI and everything. And so, yeah, I guess you're probably right. They were basically, so they were

better off doing this. And so I thought it was really interesting because, you know, how many times we go, come to CES and companies, whether they're startups or whatever, they'll announce like a concept car and, you know, it might look really flashy, it might have a couple things that move and everything. And ultimately, it's a thing that doesn't really work. And it's, it's, really just about the idea, whereas Sony, what was really interesting about it to me was, well, first off, it was a total surprise. No one had any idea this was coming. And honestly, they were like, they didn't even really give it the sort of attention it deserved. They were doing their own press conference for other things unrelated to the automotive world, including announcing

the PS5 logo and really like leaving everybody out on the limb thinking there was going to be something more coming. And at the very end of the press conference, they were just kind of like, and also we want to support the future of mobility and a car just rolled on state. and they were like, our sensor tech and our entertainment and all this stuff would be great for the automotive world. And everybody was kind of like, wait, a car? And like people hadn't really even caught up to it yet before they were like, goodbye. And it was just over.

And everybody was kind of like. And so, yeah, no, I mean, I think you're right. Like the thing that was interesting to me was talking to them. Their whole pitch is that idea of like, you know, our camera sensors are really good. There's no reason why our camera sensors can't be in the sort of like vision-based driver assistance packages that are going into a lot of modern cars, eventually autonomous cars, like fully autonomous cars. And then same with their entertainment stuff. And they were like, you know, we could make a concept car that just has some of that stuff nominally, or we can

make a car that works. We'll partner with, they partnered with this automotive supplier called Magna that is like a contract manufacturer and a couple other companies. And they're like, let's make something that actually drives. And then that way when we go to these business meetings with these companies that might be our customers, we can say like, hey, we don't know, we're not in the trenches with you, but like we understand how hard it is to design an electric car from the ground up now in some capacity in a way that maybe these other companies don't. And like, I think they're just sort of expecting like that to maybe gain them a little bit of credibility in a way that they wouldn't if they just rolled out a big hunk of plastic. Tell us about the actual car. So it's an electric car.

It's built on a sort of skateboard-style platform where their battery is just all across the floor. It allegedly has around 300 miles of range. It's got decent performance specs as far as that side of it goes. And then on the outside, it kind of looks a little like maybe a Tesla. Everybody kind of has a different opinion on how it looks. We've heard everything from Hyundai to Porsche to Tesla. Honestly, the thing I think it looks the most like is like, especially from the side profile, it looks a lot like the lucid air from the EV startup, Lucid Motors.

But, you know, it's like, you know, smooth, clean lines. It was all silver, like barely a paint job on it, a real sort of like sweeping glass roof across the top. But the real focus of it is on the inside where there is a set of displays that stretch from one pillar to the other, three displays, one in front of the driver for digital instrument cluster stuff, a touchscreen in the center for infotainment, and another touchscreen in front of the passenger for infotainment and navigation and all that. stuff. And what was really cool about all that, that whole setup is like the user interface and the software, all of that, the design of it was really smooth, really slick. I wish I had had more than like 15 minutes in the car to like play around with it because, you know, it may have just been like a demo set up to work. I don't know how it was running, how deeply it was connected to the car, but like it was a lot of fun to use. And the animations and stuff are really nice.

Sony making a good non-gittery touchscreen interface might be a first for that company. Well, they only made one. Yeah. And then there's a good non-jittery touchscreen interface might be a first for that company. Yeah. And then there's like the there's another screen kind of in the center console. There's like a touchpad like coming off the center console. So you don't have to reach up in the touch screen. You can it's got like haptic. So you can sort of like flick through. It's almost like a card based system like the menu system in the on the main touchscreen.

And, you know, and there's a lot of features that they sort of teased in there. There's like, you know, it's using one of the cameras up front to record dash cam footage all the time. You could then theoretically, they showed us an example of this, you know, say you were driving through San Francisco, but you were worried about, like, paying attention to the road, you could go back and look at that dash cam footage and, like, enjoy your drive through the city by looking at the footage again and, like, set music to it and stuff like this. And, like, and then there's, you know, some real, like, we got to come up with some stuff to say.

Yeah, that was where it started to veer in the, like, you might have been, like, stuck on this project a little too long kind of thing. But, yeah, and then there's some other, you know, kind of future, like, kind of bleeding edge, maybe not bleeding edge, but futuristic tech, like side cameras as opposed to side mirrors. Yeah. You know, their big selling point for that. That's not a thing that's legal in the U.S. right now, but it's the thing that's catching on in Europe. And their big selling point there is like these are HD cameras and they're going to be automotive grade and the ones in Europe right now, like they're not as high quality. And so that was basically the whole pitch.

But it was honestly, the funniest thing about it was like they really had no idea that it was going to be this, like, well-received. Like, I think they were just completely overwhelmed. Because everybody saw it and was like, Sony car! And then everybody was, like, just obsessed with that idea. And I think something that's going to be really interesting to watch over the next, like, probably five years or 10 years is, like, we're going to get to a point. And we're actually our almost kind of here.

I was talking about this the other day with somebody. And then I met someone from Bosch and they were like, oh, we did this. We're going to get to a point where, like, the electric vehicle tech comes down enough in cost that, like, one of the... of these big automotive suppliers is going to just be able to design one of these sort of skateboard platforms where it's just batteries, electric motors, and like, you know, sort of like plugs that run right up into something that you could just plop on top. And Bosch actually has an example of it on the floor here. And like, I don't think it's hard to imagine a scenario where like, you know,

in five or ten years, if that is cost effective enough, Sony could just like buy that skateboard, or me not them because they put the work into making this one. Any other company could buy that skateboard and make like a 5,000 run, you know, whatever car, you know, a GoPro car. Like, it could be anything. Like, and I think there is a scenario or something like that could exist. But for right now, they have no plans to mass produce it. They're like, we have no plans to mass produce it. I was like, does that mean you have plans to do a limited run? And they're like, no, we don't mean that. So they're not planning on making it. It's not something you're going to be able to buy. It is a very B-to-B thing. But, you know, it was just really striking because

usually- Usually people don't put that much work into their concept cars. I mean, they call it a prototype, but usually at CES, there's not that much, uh, yeah, people don't show their work as well as that. So what struck me about looking at the inside is up the three screens. Yeah. They're just flat displays. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. There's a lot of other cars here. There's a lot of, there's a lot of flexible and folding display tech everywhere. And like, Bighton is here. They've got a 40 inch curve screen. I think we saw T's and you escalade that has like a 38 inch curved OLED. Like, I think the idea of flexible screens inside of cars, we're not just like, like doing the Model 3 thing and it's like Elon went to Comp USA and like just bought a bunch of 17 inch

monitors. Yeah. Where you actually conforming it to the design of the car is super interesting. But you went and looked at the Biden display as well. Yeah, I got to drive the car. And they're like a really interesting story. They're a Chinese EV startup. One of many.

But they showed up at CES here two years ago and showed off the concept version of this car in this very sort of wild and wacky press event. And in the time since, they've struck a deal with first AutoWorks, which is like the original state-owned automaker in China. So they have some pretty legitimate backing now. They're trying to get it into production this year. And the headlining feature is that screen. They're not trying to make their electric SUV anything like super performance or whatever. They're really focusing on that and some of the other tech in the car, like facial recognition and health tracking and all this other crazy stuff.

but they were offering drives. It was just in like a parking lot as most demos tend to be in CES. So, you know, I could get sort of a sense of like what it's kind of like to drive the car, but I was really trying to focus on, you know, this screen is so massive. Everybody's kind of looked at it and said,

that's so distracting, it's so unnecessary and for good reason. And so I just wanted to get a sense of like, is that really going to be the case? And they have said that they put a lot of work and thought into trying to design the user interface so that it won't be distracting. There are like, basically, so it's 48 inches long

or across or whatever. It goes from pillar to pillar. It's pretty tall too. It's probably about like maybe 10 inches tall. And the way they sort of divvy it up is there's almost like four sections. There's no like physical divider. But like the one right in front of the driver is like always only going to be like instrument cluster stuff.

And then the next three are like widgets and you can basically flip through different things. You could put like a stock act thing up. You could put a news headline thing. I love the idea that you're like customizing your button screen. You're like, I've got to get that stock widget. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

And they, but they said that those widgets won't update while you're driving. Okay. Same thing with like, obviously this screen is, you know, a pretty good fit for media, but you won't be able to play video while you're driving.

They've showed off on stage, you know, an integration with teleconferencing stuff, but you wouldn't be able to do that while you're driving. They're basically saying, the idea is, like ultimately if this car was able to drive itself, like obviously then you could use all this stuff like while you're on the highway or whatever. But in the meantime, they've done all of that

kind of stuff. And then like the just the UI elements in general, they've tried to make it pretty minimalist so that it doesn't distract you. And one thing I did like about it is, well, two things that made it feel not too distracting. One is that the screen is really kind of sunk into the dashboard. The dashboard sort of like dips down. And the screen's like, it's not as in your eye line as you think. It might be in the photos. And then the other thing is I actually really liked having like the speedometer and the range and everything. It's like right under your vision. Like almost in the spot where like a heads up display is on modern cars. And so, you know, their pitches like, you know, in a Tesla model S or X, you're looking not only over but down

because of the vertical screen. And so like having that information like right there is, you know, potentially safer. But the thing that was really distracting is there's a screen in the steering wheel too, which is, you know, their pitches, because the big 48-inch screen isn't a touchscreen. It's just a, it's a regular display. And so you control it with either the touchscreen in the steering wheel or they also have a touchpad coming off the center console. And it's just like, this one is like, I was trying to figure out like why it was so disrupting. And it wasn't until I was like writing about it last night where I was like, I guess I'm just never used to having a screen that close to my face that I'm not like purposefully.

holding. Like, it feels like it's being, like, thrust in your face. And there's something very, there's, like, a tension there that made it feel really distracting. Yeah. So, I mean, I think that, like, because they've gone so all in on this screen, like, they definitely, it's partially up to them to, like, really justify this. But like he said, like, there are so many other car companies that are going this direction that, like, we really can't rely on them to be, like, the arbiters of whether or not this is a good idea. Like, it's really going to be up to everybody to just, like, push back on the idea, like, really force these companies. is to make the case.

Yeah. And it's going to be a lot of them that are going to have to make that case. I think this year is an inflection point in flexible displays. Like, they're here. Yeah. Right?

Like, everybody, my favorite, like, show floor, like, trivia bit is Rale, which made the bad folding phone. And they made a, they made a speaker with a screen that goes around it. Well, so we've got one trick. They're like, Dyson. Like, what's Dyson's one trick? They, like, made a fan.

Yeah. Like, now there's anything that has a fan in it. There's a Dyson version. Like, Real is, like, we definitely figure out how to fold the screen. Yeah. What if we put it? Like, literally there's a top hat with like a Royals.

That's my favorite thing. They made a purse. But like they set up their booth right outside the LG booth. So it's like they're just hoping some LG executive walks out and it's like, we should buy this company. Yeah. But you see it. It's like it's here.

Like there's flexible displays everywhere. Yeah. And I think that, okay, we're going to, we're actually going to re-conceptualize the interior of cars because we're not working with rectangles. Yeah. Yeah. Because it does have like kind of a curve to it. And it's, it is a nice looking screen.

Like the resolution and everything is really. good. And if you wanted a giant screen in front of your face, like, this is probably the one you want. This discussion has been very earnest and thought-provoking, interesting, look at the future. It is time to talk about the avocars. It's time to be a car. Mercedes-Benz made a concept car. As they often do, they are a, both they and parent company, Daimler, are very into telegraphing where they want to bring things by making extremely flashy concept cars and often debuting them here at CES. We have seen a lot of them over the years here. Oftentimes they have a more specific technological purpose, like the F0, the F015, uh, was this one that they showed off a maybe

four years ago or something like that. That was like all about like here's like what we think like an autonomous car could be like in 30 years or whatever. Whereas this one, so this one was it was so funny because they were being extremely careful about telling us anything about the event. It was just basically like, come to this thing, you want to be there. And it was because they were working with an entertainment property, you know, like, they were working with Hollywood. And so, like, it just gets more difficult. And so they made a concept car and they made it in conjunction with the people behind

Avatar, including James Cameron, who came out on stage. And the car is called the Mercedes-Benz Vision AV-A-V-T-R. and it is inspired by Avatar. The film from 2009 that has spent a decade teasing sequels. Avatar is bad. Avatar's a bad movie.

Avatar's a bad movie. It's a bad movie. Instead of like promoting a particular technology or whatever, what they were really trying to do this concept car is say they like many other automakers have really big sustainability goals

for the next like 20 or 30 years. And they were saying like, okay, so by 20, 39, we want to do X. So what would a car look like in that really far-off future that would be like the most sustainable thing in the world or like the most environmentally friendly car in the world or whatever? And so they were, that was like the genesis of the concept car. How they got tied up with Avatar, I'm really not sure.

But at one point, you know. Well, James Cameron was like, look, I've got this idea for a car in my movie, but I'm never actually going to make this movie. Would you like to build the Avicar? Yeah. So they tied up with Avatar at some point. And then the whole thing becomes like, you know, in Avatar, there's a battle over natural resources or whatever.

That was basically the trench. Do you control it by putting your ponytail into its ponytail? No. OK. So the environmental thing is one thing, right? I'm into that. Because that's sort of what they normally do with concept cars.

But then there's this whole other part of this where this car, it's supposed to be autonomous, if you want it to be. But there's no steering wheel. There's no pedal. There's nothing. The only way to control this car is in the center console, there is this.

It's hard to describe. It's like a four layer oval thing that like accordions up from the center console to meet your hand. And like you put your hand on it and you can like just move it forward and that like launches the car in autonomous mode. Or there's supposed to be a mode where like you can use that almost like a joystick to drive the car around. This thing also matches your heart rate and breathing. And so like this is where they lost the plot where this and some of the other things in how you interact with the giant. screen in the front is supposed to be the literal, and I mean that like they actually said literal merging of human and technology. And like they went down this whole path. And James Cameron did

this too when he came out on stage where he was like, I forget the exact quote, but he was basically like, yeah, like humans and just like the Navi and the banshees like and they plug their hair. Like I had totally forgotten about Avatar. He was like just how like they plug their hair into the banshees and become one with them to travel. He was like, we will merge with the machines. And so it was like, it was so weird because like he's also on this like big, you know, he did an interview with CNA and he was like, you know, like I'm super into like the environmental concerns and like whatever. But he was also very into this idea of like, oh, we're definitely going to merge with the machines. So he's like, you remember my hit movie 2009's Avatar. Yeah.

You're aware that the main characters are a race of beings called the navi and they have horses is called banshees. Like, you never care so much about Avatar for that. And so like, yeah, yeah. So that was kind of... Also, I believe that Navi make love to each other doing the hair thing, right? Oh, God.

I don't know. I hadn't seen it in so long because I only ever watched it once because it was a terrible movie. Also, like, how many years does he have to be able to reference Avatar and assume people know what he's talking about? There's no way teens have seen Avatar.

Yeah, they have a theme park and then the sequels are supposed to be coming. In fact, part of the event on Monday night was showing off concept art for Avatar 2. In the middle of them, they spent an hour debuting this car. And that was the only thing they showed off. And so it was like, honestly, it was like the opposite end of the spectrum of the Sony car where like this is just like way too much. And like, honestly, I think the weirdest thing about it, I didn't really write about this because they didn't really get

at it, but it's kind of what they're getting out, which is like, okay, back to the environmental stuff. Like, you're talking about this movie where these indigenous people are protecting their natural resources and like it just felt like really weirdly like appropriative of like a fake culture that doesn't exist. It's like, oh, you wanted to promote your environmental sustainability by appropriating an indigenous culture from a fictional piece of work. Which is also appropriating indigenous culture. Yeah, which is also. Yeah, it was like, I don't know, there was something really gross about that, like the more I thought about it. So that's the Mercedes-Ben avatar car. I don't think you mention the most important aesthetic property of the car, which is the scales.

Oh, yeah. It has 33 bionic flaps, Mercedes-Benz called them on the back, but they're scales. And they like kind of, it's honestly, like, if I was standing behind them at one point on the stage, and they like, they all actuate up and they do it in like different patterns and stuff. And this is another point where they lost the plot where they were like, oh, it would be used to maybe communicate with other people outside the car or the driver. And it's like, how is it going to communicate with the driver? You can even see through it. Like, there's no way to see it from where you're sitting. Obviously people walking by your avatar car

And they're like, oh, I recognize that pattern of flapping. Yeah. Someone is in distress. But like, yeah. I just can't wait for it to show up in like a me-go's music video in like a year. Like Cuevo's on this shit. Wasn't, what?

It's a cyber truck. Yes. Yeah, cyber truck is in Travis. It's amazing. All right. That's enough Avikar. Tell us very quickly about the Segway S-Pod. Then we got to take a break.

Egg, egg, egg, egg, egg. You know, Segway entered our hearts like two decades. ago with their weird stand-up two-wheeler self-balancing vehicle. They did that for a long time with a bunch of different iterations, including off-road versions and whatever. And they got bought by 9Bot in China. And they started making hoverboards and, like, you know, no one cares about hoverboards anymore.

And so now Segway has basically like the next generation Segway, which is another two-wheeled self-balancing vehicle. But instead of standing, why not sit? And so there's this thing that kind of looks like, you know, half an egg, and it's a chair, and it sits on the two wheels, and it's called the Segway S-Pod, and it's basically a seated segue. You don't have to lean to move it. There's a little joystick on the, like, sort of right armrest, and you can, like, pilot it around. And, you know, it's ridiculous. It's definitely gotten a lot of flack already because people are kind of like,

wow, this is the thing from Wally and, like, how lazy are we that we need to sit down on a segue to move around? But I think for one thing, like, one thing I has going for it is, like, it is kind of hard for some people to get used to the balancing you have to do on a traditional segue. It could have sort of applications for people who have mobility challenges. They didn't really talk about it in that sense. I really do think that they want this to be the thing where like you and your family go on a tour, a segue tour of like Washington, D.C. And like your grandma's, it's a laziest tour.

Your grandma's not going to like stand up on the segue. She's going to sit in this thing. But well, that's a whole other thing. So I got to write it. and it's, or drive it, and it's, you know, it's kind of wild. It's supposed to have, let's just be clear. I was told that you crashed it. You crashed it.

I did not crash it. You are so ashamed of this fact. I think you should wear it as a bad driver. To be clear, a crash occurred. A crash occurred. A crash occurred. The joy, no, so I went to, we were basically done filming. This is how it always happens.

It was basically done filming. And Phil, our video director was like, go over there. We need like one more shot. And so I went down on this little track they had at their booth to try and turn around and do like one more thing. And as I was like driving away from Phil, the joystick just like popped out. Because this is like a full CES prototype. Yeah. Yeah. Like it worked really well. I'm actually was like really surprised at how well this thing. It's, it's a lot of Funder Drive. It's pretty nimble. And it is just like rock solid. Like you, you press the button and it lifts up. And like,

it does not feel like you're on two wheels. Like they, all of the experience they've gained in developing this technology over the years was like pretty evident. But it was a prototype. And so the joystick just popped out and it sort of like locked me into that steam and like into the wall I went like punched punched a hole in like the wood wall didn't automatically stop when it hit the wall yeah and it like tilted down like it certainly wasn't like it wasn't like oh they did like a sad like wall like yeah and then like the headrest popped off and it was it was just very much like they gave you a helmet for a reason yeah they gave me a helmet for a reason and it's like it's the perfect example of like how these like cES is like always like one small move in the wrong direction away from like like

like breaking apart. Like everything here is just like... I will never forget Joanna Stern and the robot suitcases. Oh, yeah. It's just like endless disaster of the robot suitcase. Yeah. So, I mean, it's, it's not something they're going to start selling the consumers right away.

It's something they want to trial in like, you know, fleet, like fleet settings. I want one of these for the office. Here's... I'm telling you, it's one of those things that you'll ride and like all of the things that you think you'd be worried about, especially like how you look and everything, go completely out the window because as soon as you're in it and driving it, you're like, this is awesome. This is how Wally literally begins.

Everyone's like, what am I just saying this chart? All right, we got to take a break. I'm going to talk about streaming words. Support for the show comes from Framer. Framer is an enterprise-grade, no-code website builder, used by teams at companies like Perplexity and Muro to move faster. With real-time collaboration and a robust CMS, with everything you need for great SEO,

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Framer.com slash verge. Rules and restrictions may apply. We've returned. Ashley Carman. You've been to war. You could say that, I guess. Yeah. And there's a lot of content companies here.

Yeah, just CS in general. But like WarnerMedia had a thing. NBC mentioned Peacock. but they have it yesterday a little bit later. Peacock guys are so deep. Biocom, CBS even announced a deal with Bighton to provide content for their screenings. So it's all over the place.

Yes, finally two and a half men in your electric vehicle. That's what everyone's been dreaming of. Spotify had a bunch of announcements. But let's start with Quibi. There were streaming companies here, but the streaming company that was here was Quibi. Which, Virchcast listeners know what Quibi is, right? Like, we don't have to run through the whole

rigmarole of, like. Quibi is. Jeffrey Katzberg and Meg Whitman's new streaming service that provides quick bites. Quick bites. That's what I got for you. Two hour long movies broken up into 10 minute or less chunks that are serialized so you can only view these 10 minute chunks once a week. So you have to wait to see the two hour movie. Sounds brutal.

And then at the end of all the weeks, then you can watch the two hour movie still broken up into 10 minute chunks. But you could do it all at once. Yeah. And there's like all their stuff. But they like, they're like, CS, we're doing the keynote. Yeah. So Jeffrey Katzenberg, Meg Whitman, primetime Wednesday morning keynote at CES. They came.

We didn't know what they were going to be debuting here. We figured, okay, we've heard about Quibi. They've been making so much noise about their content deals. They have everybody from Spielberg to J-Lo to 50 cent. It's your favorite. Polygon has a deal. Polygon. Yeah, Polygon, Vox Media property has a deal.

They've just been announcing tons of content deals. So, you know, we knew that side of the business and we figured it's CES. this must be the moment where we're going to get a peek at the app. Like, naturally, this is a CES. We're going to show it to us. Right. This is the time. That did not happen.

It's not happen even a little bit. Nope, not even a little bit. We were told we had a press briefing ahead of the keynote where we got a little bit of a preview of what they were going to discuss. And they said, we'll send you some photos like a teaser of the app. The teaser of the app was a render of a phone with a Quibi logo on it. It's the loading screen. Okay.

Oh, is that the load? Okay. Well, they did show is their, their flippy tech. Right. So what they say. So we didn't get to see the app at all. We heard that it might, it's inspired by TikTok and Instagram more than Netflix where you see a list of titles.

They want you to get into the content right away. That's what we know. They also showed us their patented technology called turnstile, which allows you. Turnstile is spelled with Y, by the way? I was, oh, is it really? I was just thinking that and I was going to ask that. And I was like, is that a CES fever dream that I had? Turnstile. So turnstile is a technology that allows you to seamlessly switch between portrait and landscape mode.

The directors are filming their content with this technology in mind. So some of them are really leaning and hard where they are creating two fully different cuts. So maybe if you're in portrait mode, you'll see one thing. And if you switch into landscape mode, you'll see a totally different scene from a different point of view, which is supposed to entice you to want to switch your phone back and forth. throughout your 10 minute quick bite. There's 10 minute quick bites and there's also like two minute daily things and there's weather and horoscopes and yeah. Right. There's other content than the big light you want available to you. For $5 a month with ads.

Right, that's what crazy. There's ads in the 10 minute bite. It could be less than 10 minutes. There's ads. Neelai I know wants to go deep on how turnstile works. What if the $5 a month thing is like not, I mean it's real obviously, but what if they don't actually expect anybody to ever subscribe, they just need to put a price there to seem legit. And what their real monetization strategy is, is just content deals with cell phone carriers.

So they only have one, which is with T-Mobile. T-Mobile is, quote, bundling it. Okay. We were told that it won't be preloaded on phones. T-Mobile is going to market it. Okay. And like something, something, something. If you have it on your phone, if you download it and use it, like, there's some revshare there. Okay. But it's not like, you know, like, what is AT&T and T? going to do, like obvious, horrible thing they're going to do. Like, the HBO Max app will be, like, preloaded on every Android phone that 18T makes. T-Mobile's not doing that here. So we didn't see the app.

Did not see the app. We did see Jeffrey Katzenberg, which was a true experience. Amazing. Amazing. I think, Ashley, you pissed him off. I did. Oh. Yeah.

Because I brought up Disney. Katzenberg used to basically run Disney. And he was fired from Disney. Yeah. And then, yeah, so bad blood. And we brought up Mandalorian to ask how, if Quibi, you know, could, you know, could learn anything from Mandalorian, specifically the viral success of Baby Yoda and how maybe when greenlining all this amazing content, he might consider the memes. Yeah. And that,

that's it. That set him off. Yeah. He was like, I've been doing this since before you were fucking born. He literally said that. It was like very funny. Which is accurate. Which is true. One hundred percent accurate. But he's like, listen to me. Like, yeah, TV shows are great. Like, big hit TV shows are great. But I get to say that I've been doing this since before you were fucking born. It was great. He was, uh, Jeffrey Katzenberg, we have to like spend more time with him. That's what I would like most from Quibi is just a Jeffrey Katzenberg show. And with Meg Woodman. I'd pay $5 a month for that. Those quotes set next to the ambitions of Quibi in your piece was like the most

hallucinatory thing I've read this week. It's incredible. Okay. So I want to talk about that that feeling. But just really quickly, Anturn style, I don't think that we actually saw it working. Right. Yeah. So you, this, this was like Neely's moment during our. I was just like, Nilai, run free. Go, man. If you show me a piece of technology, I will try to break it. If you're in your car, I want you to pull over. And imagine that you are doing, making a product that has anything at all to do with video.

Yeah. And then imagine what Neely's first question will be. And just pause. Make sure you have an answer to that question. The answer is he will grill you on bit rate. Yes. Okay. Well, I'll just make it very simple for people.

If you're going to ship creators to make their videos on Quibi, they have to upload two different video files. They upload a portrait one and a landscape one. Right. It's not like one weird new format. They're just uploading two videos. They're cut in different aspect ratios. So if you're going to instantly rotate between them, the easiest answer is to just send

both files to the phone, which means every video will be twice as big as a regular video, which is bad because they're designed to be viewed on phones. They usually have data plans. So we're like, how are you solving this? And like, this is the big patent is like they have a proprietary compression tech where a lower res version of the thing you're not watching comes along in a side car. They call it the sidecar. And when you switch, it switches to a lower res version and then scales up. So every time you rotate the phone, the video downgrades, like just by nature of the thing.

But we were rotating the phone and everything was perfect. And I was like, is this real? And he's like, it is real. We just preloaded it because the Wi-Fi is bad. and we haven't actually seen it working on mobile yet. We haven't actually seen it streaming yet. And I think that is like the big question mark is every time we rotate your phone, if the video gets worse, you're not going to rotate your phone.

I will say like, that's the end of my bit rate. I mean, there's a lot that can be said about Quibi and how ridiculous it is. There is, I mean, like, they did the thing that I think we all love, and there's definitely a very CES thing, which is they made that piece of tech. And they made an idea that is just like there's something deeply interesting about that, even if it becomes a thing that no one ends up. using like just figuring that out is like a fun challenge to solve their ctio uh rob post told me that like even when they do the offline viewing and they send the whole files the way compression

works is you still don't get you still don't use double the data it's still less because they're compressing so many similar pixels in portrait and landscape so that's like really cool that's super cool that's awesome right okay i buy it but the hallucinatory part was like Trevor Katzmering me like, this is a third era of filmmaking. And it's like, wait a minute. The training day director told us Quibi has invented a new language of cinema. Yeah. So first of all, I definitely asked a very leading question.

I was like, is this cinema? And he was like, of course it is. And I was like, wow, we're in it now. Can I just very briefly? I was going to write this in the newsletter. And I got halfway through. And then I was like, I can't finish this thought. And so I'm going to delete the last hour and a half of work.

did and an unfinished thought is perfect with a verge cast. That's what we're here for. Anton Fukua is totally right. This is a new language of cinema. Maybe. Here's the thing. Maybe it is.

The first TV shows were basically just like radio shows that happen to have cameras in front of them. This is 100% the Quibi like Hy-Hprio. Yeah. No, but it's an animation that's about, that does exactly what you're about to say. Oh, they do. They do.

They make this thing. Yes. Yeah, the keynote they literally ran through the history of cinema. I am a huge sucker for, oh, we have a a new screen, we need to figure out how to change things so it feels right on the screen. This is why I'm super into iPad OS. This is why I was super into WebOS back in the day. It's like, oh, we should actually like think about this thing. And it's always the second or

third generation that gets it right because the first generation is just imitative of what came before it. And I am not saying that he's right. I'm not actually saying that he's right. But that's what you're saying. I do, I just, I love the idea that they're trying it. I don't know if they're right. Probably not. But the fact that they're like taking serious to the idea that they should change what professional video is for a phone is interesting. So it's funny they brought up WebOS. Oh, God. Because, because failure. No, I remember the WebOS keynote very distinctly, as I'm sure you do. It had the same vibe, which is they were acting like they had already won. Right. They were acting like they already had millions of users and they had already changed all these behaviors and they were showing you how the world would work in the future. And we all bought it. And maybe I'm just jaded because we lived through many of those moments together. But I was like, you don't have any users. Like zero people have the app on the phone. No users. No app. No work, like technical demo that is actually, you know, connecting to their servers and delivering. Yeah. It was just like that's the facts. You do have Spielberg, although he was not at the keynote.

So maybe not. I was expecting a parade of stars at the keynote. I mean, but this is what's so interesting about Quibi is regardless of whether it fails or not, it hits on so many of the moment conversations right now, like the cinema conversation of Netflix is buying movie theaters because directors are like, I want my film shown on a big screen. Now you're going to ask these directors to put the effort in to build

videos specifically made to rotate on phones. It's like, okay, that's a whole new level to this discussion. And the advertising piece is actually super interesting. They claim they've already sold out their first year of inventory, which comes to $150 million.

Proctor and Gamble was on stage being like, we love this. They showed off a Pepsi ad. There's a Mountain Dew ad, too, with a car, I think I saw somewhere. I think advertisers don't want to be on YouTube. They don't want to be on Twitch. Like, those are dangerous places for their brands. Right. Because of the things that happen there, we cover, how often do we cover demonization?

So it's like there's more yawning commercial demand for this service to exist than maybe consumer demand. Right. Like, everyone in Hollywood wants this to exist. Everyone, like, every advertiser wants this to exist. Jeffrey Katzenberg wants it to exist. And like, I don't know if people want it to exist. So what you're saying is that Quibi is going to cause the next recession.

Yeah, it's just like one of those things where like, yep, they checked all the boxes. Like, what if there was a thing that was better than YouTube that you could watch that was full of Hollywood celebrities? And what if it didn't cost so much money? And what if that was a great advertising? Like, yes, check, check. You know what's really hard is getting anyone to download an app and pay $5 a month to watch ads? So we'll see. But it was a very entertaining day.

I mean, IGTV has tried to pursue this. Not to the, obviously, the billion dollar funding, you know, actually giving Spielberg money to build a two-hour movie. But IGTV has been pursuing stars. They hired a full L.A. team to literally sit down with Drake and be like, hey, Drake, check out this cool thing you can do and how you could use it to market to your audience. That is their job. And, like, the stars still don't want to use IGTV. They had some not-so-kind things to say about IGTV and Facebook, right? Yeah.

They were, like, Katzmurger's like, no, this is an amazing line. They're spending, they're making content at $100 a minute. We're spending $100,000 a minute. Yeah. Which is like, you usually say that to not going to come back to one. By the way, Los Angeles Times, LA Times reported yesterday that they got an additional $400 million investment. Yeah, I think like, they've burned through the billion.

And one of their, one of their big partners is actually Google, right? Like there's a bunch of Google stuff happening here. So like I said, I think like it could just get willed into existence because people want it to exist. But they got to show us an app. Like, it's amazing they have launch on this app. And they're supposed to launch April 6th. So they have four months. I mean, I'm sure they have an app. I want to believe if you have a billion dollars, you will build an app. I want to believe that you can do that thing. Yeah. I'm not going to fully, like, I want to believe. I'm not jaded yet. Everybody wants to believe. The power of belief is strong here. I'm just telling you, I believed in Windows phone.

You know what I'm saying? Oh, I don't believe Quibi could succeed. necessarily. I'm just saying I believe the app might show up. The billion dollar app sounds like an Apple TV plus exclusive reality show and that would fail instantly. Wow.

All right, let's take a break and come back and talk about some gadgets and wrap this up. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you know that every hire counts, but time and resources are limited. Finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates,

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I'm Paul Miller, and I'm here from an undisclosed location that is not in even really that close to Las Vegas. And I just wanted to, you know, do my, the thing, you know, the thing I do every week. And it's called, so you want to get into the GPU biz. So you may have heard the Intel. is going to do discrete GPUs. So Intel is a CPU manufacturer. They put embedded GPUs,

you know, like the Intel Ultra HD or Iris graphics, that kind of stuff, into their current CPUs. But now they're going to do discrete GPUs so they can compete with Nvidia and AMD. So you want to get into the GPU biz. There's some, some, a little bit of a checklist. And so I'm just, you know, I'm going to kind of.

vibe out, is Intel ready for this moment? One, do you have patents? GPUs are heavily patented. Your grandma can't just go out there and make a GPU because she's going to get sued to oblivion by NVIDIA and AMD and Intel. Well, Intel looks like their new GPU, the DG1, is a scaled-up embedded GPU. Now, that's probably not entirely true. but it's not seemingly not that much more powerful than Intel's embedded graphics.

It is more powerful, but a lot of that's going to come from the fact that as a discrete GPU, you can put more power and more cooling because you get, you get double the cooling basically because it's a separate part from the CPU, right? So that's step one. So I think Intel has the patents because I don't know how much new stuff they're actually doing here. Two, do you have a confusing naming scheme? Of course, Intel has got this. The graphics card is right now.

It's called the Intel DG1, right? So that discrete graphics one. I think that's what it sounds for. But it's, and that's, you know what? Actually, now that I think about it, that's pretty straightforward. But under the hood, it's built on the XE architecture. That's capital X, lowercase E, which I'm. tempted to pronounce as Z, but you know what?

Also, the logo is X to the power of E, which is great. And there's X-E-L-P, that's low power, right? X-E-H-P, that's high power. And then there's X-E-H-P-C, which is, you know, Intel claims that this X-E-R architecture is going to scale from ultra-mobile. That means, like, very thin and light laptops. to XA scale, which I don't really even remember what that means. You know what?

I think they're going to really nail the confusing naming scheme in the long run. But DG1, you know what? I don't know. Maybe that's too simple. Step three, or requirement three, for doing discrete graphics. Superfluous design accents. The Intel DG1, if you go on theverge.com, one of my favorite websites, there are pictures of the Intel DG1.

as a discrete graphic, like a, like a, like a, like a 180 card, right? Actually not, not that big. More like a 1060 site, you know, like a short graphics card that you put into a PCIE slot in your, in your desktop, right? But that's not what the DGI, the DG1 actually is. The DG1 is the first iteration is actually going to be a discrete graphics for laptops in the new Tiger Lake Intel laptops. So it's not going to.

to look anything like this because it's going to be tiny and inside of a laptop. And this is a big card. So apparently this picture of this DG1 card is actually a card that's going to go to developers because there's a lot of like, I don't know, driver work that needs, or I don't, I really actually don't have any idea. But this card is for developers. It's not for putting into your desktop PC because the actual card, the first discrete graphics they're shipping are just for laptops. So, of course, all the design accents are superfluous because, you know, this is nonsensical as a design for a laptop card because it is obviously not for a laptop. You know what? This got confusing and that's on me. I'm sorry. But anyways, I just wanted to welcome Intel to the

GPU biz. I think they're totally ready. This is going to be really fun, really exciting. obviously AMD is also doing a bunch of really refocusing on laptop graphics as well. It seems like that's pretty exciting. So the whole scene is going to be a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to it. Thank you. Have a good time in Las Vegas. Don't eat any questionable meats. Dieter, right before we started recording, we did our best of CS picks.

We did. And I demanded that we pick the Lenovo ThinkPad X one fold and everyone got very sad, including you. Yeah, I got very sad. My eyes went dead. I looked for the nearest ocean. You locked eyes with Sean and both of you wanted to die. But I think a laptop with folding a LED screen is by far the best thing here. But there's a lot of.

The X1 fold in particular is the best one here because Lenovo announced a price and said they were shipping it. And nobody else did that. Yeah, winner by default. That's what I'm saying. But there's like a lot of like good foldy PCs floating around here. There's a lot of foldy PCs floating around here. So not all good, but all interesting. The really important thing to me is that nobody really knows exactly what to do yet.

No one really knows how the fold should work. No one really knows should it fold this way or that way. No one really knows how sturdy you need to make the thing in order to make the screen not crease, how durable the thing is going to really be. But the most important thing that not anybody really knows yet or is not talking about directly yet because they can't is the thing. Tom Warren has pointed out, which is for all of these full DPCs, what's the software going to look like? Because Windows 10 can't do it.

So we need Windows 10X, and we know very little officially of exactly how that thing is going to work on these foldy screens. Does you talk to the turnstile, folks? 10X is coming later this year, right? Yeah. So 10X is like, we know it's coming on the Neo. I always get the Microsoft Neo and Duo, Surface Neo and Duo confused. I think it's like mostly going to be a full screen paradigm instead of like Windows, you know, which is Windows 10X, not anyway.

But it's going to be aware of multiple screens and multiple positions of those screens. I forget the word that they use to like all the different ways that a screen can exist in relation to another screen. And so they're thinking through that and Microsoft is the best position to do that probably. But the thing about Microsoft and new versions of Windows is when they try and come up with the grand new paradigm, the first time they do it, it's bad. And then the second time they do it, it's good. Yeah. Right.

I mean, this is the Windows 8, Windows 10 story in a nutshell, right? The Vista stuff. Yeah. All that. Every other. Every other rules. TikTok, TikTok. And so I think it is actually fair to say that the 10X is going to be like the tick.

It'll be the first one. And so I don't have a huge degree of confidence that when these things actually start being sold, they're going to be great because I don't, I could be wrong. Microsoft couldn't nail it. And then everything will be fine. and beautiful and wonderful, but I don't know. And then the very last thing I'll say about the foldables

is every time you bring up, you know, is this thing really durable? What about it? It's plastic, basically, and like you got to have all this protections around it. You know, what about glass? And they're like, yep. Yeah, man, glass. As soon as we have glass, it'll be fine.

They'll come. And not in a way of like whatever. They don't, they like hope someday it happens. But it's like, sigh. I wish I could tell you what I know, but I don't. I can't. Yeah. Because there's one glass supplier in its corning.

Yeah. And they'll be like, you're the one who told you get no glass. Yep. Well, I've heard that too. We'll see. I'm just excited. I'm actually very excited for form factor evolution. I think holding screens are going to push new form factors.

And like, I've been trying out this phrase, the tyranny of rectangles. Ooh. That's it. I like it. Time for squares. Yeah. That's all I'm saying. The revolution is here.

Sam Bifert wrote the best headline, though. 2020 might be the year of reasonably okay foldable PCs, comma, maybe. Just like, yep, that's how I feel. I feel good about it. Okay, let's run through a few other things that happened to it. Samsung, Samsung. Samsung. They're here.

Yep. Samsung's with a vengeance this year. They really came at it. So, yes, they did TVs. Yes, we talked about the AI fridge race, which is amazing. They continue to have, like, smart closets that can shake your clothes free of debris. All right, whatever. Let's just start with neon.

Everyone's side. There's a small group of people somehow associated with Samsung in some way who have promised to change the entire universe and that they think is as great as grandly as Da Vinci and Michelangelo. Yeah. And they're going to make these digital avatars. The reason that we said those names is because they compared themselves to those people. Yes, exactly. Like word for word. And so the idea is there's a human on a screen that looks and talks and acts just like a human on a screen.

It can see you. It can interact with you. It has emotions and facial expressions. And it's actually helpful. It can actually do what you want it to do. Like give you the information about where to go in the airport when you're lost or how to file your taxes or get your license updated to TMV. I don't know. Whatever you'd want a digital avatar to do. But it's all driven by AI. It's not like a recording. And it'll look and feel naturalistic. that's the idea, and that was the big, hypey, world-changing promise that we got teased for days and days and days. And then the time came for them to actually show us instead of tease it. And Sam Biford was there.

And, yeah, it doesn't look good. It didn't work. It didn't work. It crashed. The CEO of this project, I think we're coming called Star Labs. They're wholly owned by Samsung. The CEO of this guy, Pront of Mystery, and he's like, yes, we're owned by Samsung, but no one can tell me what to do. which is incredible.

This is the other hallucinatory piece from Z. He absolutely compared himself to, like, Renaissance Masters. He's like, you have to think this big. And he's like, we don't have any business model associated this. Honestly, who knows how rich Michael Angelo was, which is incredible. It's like, at the time, he really cared about it, I'm sure. It doesn't work. There's like, there's a bunch of buzzwords and the specs.

And, like, apparently he ran on, like, pretty hardcore PC. But like, James Vincent is, like, RIA reporter. And he was like, I don't know what's happening here. James is so smart. He just always has the right take. So everyone should read what James writes about these things. The artificial humans from Samsung. Samsung, in addition to artificial humans,

released a ball. Yes. No. No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. The internet has no, no, no, no. They released nothing. Oh, okay.

They had a ball on stage, and it has a little camera on it, and it should be able to follow you around. It should be able to, like, roll up to your TV and use its IR Blaster to turn the TV on, which I know Neil and I loves. And it's supposed to be like a companion that like, Tudels around your house and helps you out,

makes cute little droid noises. James Vincent is going to write that like the main reason this thing is compelling is that it makes little droid noises and that's cute. And so it's a more approachable robot. So they made a Sphiro. Yeah, but they didn't announce

if they were going to sell it exactly what it would do, when they would sell it. And when they were demoing it on stage on like the, you know, keynote the night before CS opened, there was like an asterisk in the lower right of the stage as you could barely see that was like,

may not represent final functionality. Which the functionality was nothing anyway. It was just a ball. We accidentally shipped this cube. It doesn't do as much. At the booth, it was behind glass the entire time. You were not allowed to get up, like,

get behind the glass. Yeah, you weren't even not a step up to where it was. Yeah. Well, they had like a main demonstration area. It was also behind glass. And they were like relaying the commands too, right? Like you couldn't actually directly talk to it? No, you couldn't directly interact with it at all.

And so I am not accusing Samsung of this, but there was nothing in that demo that couldn't have just been somebody with a remote control driving the ball around. Yeah. I don't think that's what happened because people did walk up to them and say, come here, come here. Then the ball did it. And you could do that at any moment. So, like, that worked. There wasn't actually somebody just sitting there driving the ball, probably 90%. But, like, it's so vague in what it is supposed to be and do and purpose it's supposed to serve that, I don't know, man.

They made a bunch of multicoled balls. I was like Sam from her as well. I just think it's cute. Let me have the cute thing. It's called Bali. Yeah. It's the ultimate, like,

let me know the ultimate, but it is a very good example of how far Samsung has distance itself from Bixby where like there is probably a timeline where this could have been the Bixie Bixby ball. The Bixby ball. Yeah. And they were like,

we're punting on Bixby. We're just calling it Bally. Did anybody see any Bixby at this booth? I don't think I saw it. I walked through that Samsung booth like maybe 10 times. Like a magnifying guy. Like where is Bixby? They promise they're going to ship the Little Bixby speaker.

And they have completely ghosted talking about the big speaker. Like it's just memory holding on the now. Well, so RIP Bixby. Bally is my new best friend. I love that. I watch that whole Bally demo. It's like exactly. They know what we'll play in like, Good Morning America.

CES round up. And it's like, Bali. The ball that falls you around. Like exactly. There's just. always like a big, there's like a lot of distance when somebody announces stuff like that without ever acknowledging the fact that there are hundreds of other like robot balls.

It is definitely just like the CES, make it to Good Morning America's Roundup. Wow. The cynicism is overtaking is totally right. She's totally right. I still like balling. Like you got to get on the local news. What do we got? We got a ball.

All right. Bally. That chirps. Absolutely. So the other thing about Paul. I thought was ridiculous, was they had it. And, like, the other display was, like, companion robots for, like, elderly folks. And so, like, they have, like, other ones that they've had for a long time.

And they're like, and our newest one, Bolly. It's like, I hate you, grandpa. I didn't get you a puppy. It's just a ball. Well, their demo video has the ball with a dog. And, like, tell me what dog wouldn't just wreck this thing. My dog would tear this thing apart. But, you know, it's like the ultimate, it's, it made me mad at how I've, like, moved I felt in the moment where the ball rolls up and, like, curls up next to the dog.

Closies up. Yeah. Like, like, cozy's up next to the dog that's curled up. And it was like, oh. And I was like, God damn. All right. I'm doing it. I can't wait for, it charges via USBC.

Of course it does. There you go. I'm so excited. I tweeted this. Therefore, it's good. So I take it back. Bolly's good. All right.

That's where we're ending it. We're ending it with our own good morning record. I'm not letting you end it there because we haven't talked about the Intel Nuck. You really want to talk about this. This, like, it's, it's all you've talked to you about today. It has caused some controversy. So Intel makes these little PCs, right? And like they've been trying to do it for a while called NUCs.

And so now they've made a slightly bigger one that you can put a graphics card in. And the entire motherboard and Intel chip is modular. So like you could theoretically swap it. out later. And so the idea is you can have like a really powerful good gaming PC where it's easier for a regular person to swap out like some of the core components that you traditionally never would. So it's like it to me it's interesting because I if I want a gaming PC I'm going to want to make a cute small one and making a cute small one turns out to be a little bit more difficult than I expected. So this all seems great. But on the other hand, it like it basically

turns a motherboard even more proprietary to like Intel than it was before. Because it's a really It's like a huge SOC, right? Right, yeah. But you can open it up a little bit and like swap out the storage and the RAM and stuff. But what's interesting about it isn't just that Intel said, we're doing this because Intel does that every year and everyone's like, okay, Intel, we believe in you. But they actually got other companies to get on board to use this like framework and platform

for their own little mini gaming PCs like Razor is making a box that uses the same card that has your motherboard and your Intel chip. on it. So it's one of these, like, this could be really cool or this could be a dystopian hellscape where Intel controls yet more of the PC market. We just don't know yet. Or it could just fizzle and be in nothing. And like, but it's like, it's fascinating to watch.

It's made a lot of people like pretty, like, grumbly. Really? I wouldn't expect these grumbles because it's like they stopped doing the other stuff. Well, it's, they haven't stopped doing the other stuff, but like, it could. And it's this weird combination of, like, more modular. and giving you more freedom to upgrade later, but also, like, less open and less ability to upgrade the way you want later. It's, like, moving from a car whose engine you can screw around with

to a car whose engine is sealed. That's just you are able to, like, easily replace that sealed engine if you want. Yeah. I mean, look, I'm, the Intel's biggest available market is, like, gaming PCs. So they want to, like, expand that market, get more people to build the stuff or use the stuff. They have to make it simpler than it is now. So, I get what they're doing. I feel like the motherboards are proprietary now.

Like that argument was like actually lost like some time ago. Like it's a it's another market over there. Yeah. I can't wait for you to get a nook and then like really. I might. I might do it. I haven't owned like a proper gaming PC in a while because I decided I was going to simplify my life and just be a console person. And maybe it's time to give up that decision and make my life more complicated again.

Yeah. I think I need that. The other PCB plot is AMD chips. But we've been running out. We, I interviewed the CEO of AMD, Lisa Sue. If you're interested in AMD chips, I assure you there's 45 minutes of that. Soon to be in your feed. Ring that bell.

What? That's how you subscribe to podcast now. I said subscribe and you said ring that bell. Yeah, you get the notification. Yeah, you ring the bell, you get the notification, and then Spotify target tags. We have to stop this. This podcast is over. I hope you can tell that we're very sleepy.

Please forgive us. I love you all for listening to the Birchcast. Thank you, everybody. Rock and roll. Goodbye. Paul. Promocode.