The Vergecast - CES: Google vs. Alexa and the latest 5G delusion

Episode Date: January 9, 2019

More from CES with The Verge’s Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, Dami Lee, and Dan Seifert who talk through the ongoing developments in voice assistant technology and the continuing rivalry between Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa. They also discuss a range of gadgets from the showroom floor such as Alienware's Area51m laptop to a laundry-folding robot as well as Verizon’s shots fired at AT&T over their 5G claim. 2:05 - Tim Cook says Apple will “announce new services this year” 8:02 - Google’s plan to take on Alexa: new features, new devices, and a Trojan horse 9:25 - We finally heard Google Assistant work on Sonos speakers 12:01 - Google Assistant’s new interpreter mode can translate conversations — but it’s not magic 15:06 - Google Assistant is coming for your car with new hands-free voice control from Anker and JBL 27:05 - Foldimate’s laundry-folding machine actually works now 31:24 - Wacom’s $649 Cintiq 16 bridges the gap between hobbyists and pros 38:16 - BOCCO emo 42:05 - The Alienware Area-51m is a full-fledged desktop disguised as a laptop 42:23 - Lenovo’s new Yoga S940 is all about its impressive display 49:12 - Verizon says it won’t launch fake 5G icons like AT&T did Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode of Virtchast is brought to you by the new Microsoft Surface Pro 6. It's light, super fast, and has great battery life. So you can work how you want for as long as you want wherever work takes you. Get more power and more speed with the new Surface Pro 6. Hello and welcome to Verchast, the flagship podcast of technology. Ooh, all of technology. The whole thing. The whole thing.

I'm Neil. I'm your friend. I just want you to remember that in your heart. I'm going to challenge you, though, as your friend on the show today. Dieter Bone is here. I'm your compatriots. I don't like it when Dieter talks. Dami Lee is here.

Hi, Dami. How are you doing? I'm good. This is my Vorgecast debut. Is it really? It is. No. No, it is. Believe me. Dami's a superstar on the verge. We've hosted like the circuit breaker show together.

Yeah. I miss that. I really miss it. We've done so many shows together. And then Dan is here. Hi, Dan. You don't get a last name. Dan Seaport is here. I am the only Dan universe. That's true.

I'm going to call you out right now. I'm going to call you out right now. Dan is running our CES coverage. He's the CIS dad. He's the dad. CES dad is better. Because there's actually other people that are running it. But like,

no, you're running it. I like yell at people to go places. Dan 100% reminded me to pee a couple days ago. It's our second episode of the Vergecast at CS. Today we're going to talk about the Google Assistant. There's tons of Google news. We're going to talk about a bunch of wacky gadgets and laptops that came out at CS.

And then I'm going to yell at Deter about 5G. But a lot of news. So we got to talk about Google Assessant. assistant. Yep. Google made a bunch of news today. There's a million gadgets to talk about, including a bunch of laptops. We've been kind of paying more attention to creator tools at CS this year, a bunch of

tablets and drawing tools to talk about. And then, of course, Verizon had its keynote today. Five geet. We're at the CEO of Verizon. Is this true? He pronounces it five ge. So technically, maybe it's different than 5G. I don't, I think that's just his accent.

But there's some stuff to talk about in the five gea. universe, which is interesting. But let's start, uh, actually with Apple one more time just for a moment. Yep. Okay. For 30 seconds, I want to talk about Apple. Tim Cook went, uh, on TV today, went on CNBC today, talked to Jim Kramer, uh, and said, conclusively, Apple will announce new services this year. Tim Cook to Jim Kramer. Yeah. Maybe that's I message on Android. I don't think it's that message. But given what we talked about yesterday on the show, what we saw, all the news we've seen, Apple working very hard with TV makers. It is fairly conclusive now that the Apple TV service, which is the next logical service to them to announce, given they spent billions of dollars

on content creation for TV. It seems very conclusive that Apple's an watcher TV service this year. Yep, for sure. And like the only question is the other, one of the posts that went up today, we put up the post of, here, all the TVs that support Airplay. And it's like relatively short. And it became very clear. And Neil and I both tweeted the same thing. thing and then I got mad at him for tweeting like two minutes before I did because I thought of it first. I just don't type as fast as he does. That's right. Yeah. So my ideas are superior here. It is too short a list to support a grand TV and movie service from Apple. Yeah. And it's all high-end stuff. Yeah. And as we learned yesterday, somebody was saying, who was saying during one of their

conferences? TCL was saying that 99% of TVs are sold under $2,000. TCL also the company that announced that contrast in a TV is the frosting. Yes, contrast is cake. So I don't know if they're aware of what they're saying. All of the TVs that are in that list that Deena mentioned, you can go check it out on the site because I don't remember all of them, but they're all pretty high-end. They're all brand new. The only ones that go back a couple of years are Vizio's models, which date back to 2017. So, yeah, these aren't the TVs that most people have. If you just look at the numbers, something between 35 and 40 million TVs are sold a year, and they don't have all of them, right?

So like, not all four, just the United States. So not all 35 to 40 million TVs in United States will have Apple services on them just by definition. Like no Roku TVs, which are some of the best selling TVs in the country, are going to have these services. So the end of this story is that right now, as you are listening to this, Johnny Ive is sitting in a room at Apple Park

in the giant spaceship campus and they've closed all the shades and they've turned on a beautiful high-end TV. And on that beautiful high-end TV is Roku. And Johnny Ive is looking at and giving design notes on an Apple TV service Roku app. Yeah. Just imagine that for a moment.

Imagine him. Imagine Johnny Ive holding that weird-ass purple remote with the fucking little loop on the side of it and the headphone jack on the bottom, the headphone jack on the remote. And don't forget the Netflix and HB and Hulu buttons on it. I totally use those, just kidding.

And the crackle button. Johnny I was holding a remote in his hand right now with a crackle button on it. I mean, I'm incredible. That's what's happening, right? There's no other way they hit the scale they need. They need to get on Amazon. They need to be everywhere.

Well, I mean, like, if they add Airplay 2 to it, then they bypass the app problem, right? Because then you use your phone and you cast. Sure. I use a very shady app that mirrors. I have a Roku. Yeah. And it mirrors my MacBook.

It cost me $10. I think it's called like Roku Mirror and they have it for like all these different apps. It's very laggy. Like I'll hit the play button and then five seconds later it plays on the TV. But it works for me. Like after I switched to a MacBook Pro, I lost my H.DMI cable port. So I had to improvise and I was like, what's on the app store? Let's see.

And then there it was. And it works for me. Wow. Yeah. I think some people will do it. In like the airplay to HomeKit, you can be like, hey, Siri, play this thing. Presumably that will work. But I don't know, we had the CEO of Roku on the Rochast last year.

And I was like, why is your stuff ugly? And he's like, because people don't care. And like that combination of like question and answer. Is that really what he said? Or did he like, no, he was very much like, look, at the end of the day, people just want the video to play. Yeah. And like, this is what people are used to with Roku. And we're like sticking with it.

And like, the hardware is. keep and we're not going to overdo it. And like all of those, all of those ideas are the opposite of Apple, which is like our office is a circle. Yeah. And we built a garden and you can't, you don't know that you're in a city.

And also like we, here's this theater that we only use for big events. And when we have other events, we rent Brooklyn. Yeah. Because we want to preserve how special the theater is. In the middle of Apple, this is all true.

In the middle of Apple Park, they have a reflection pool that is perfectly, exactly circular, like down to the, like, the millimeter. And it's relative... I like that we keep comparing their billion-dollar office building to Roku. Yeah. The pool is only, like, you know, six inches deep or something, right? Because it's a reflecting pool.

And it's weird if there's no wind because it's too flat. And you want a little bit of movement in the water. So they built a crazy plunger in the middle of the reflecting pool that goes, Whom, wom, whoa, yes. That goes womom, womom. This is true? A manhole size. plungeer in the middle of the reflecting pool that's designed to just sort of move up and down.

Is this true? Yes. We moved up to about 12 inches, maybe a little less. Deeter, I've been drinking, you could say anything you want. Is this true? It's a million percent true. I kid you not. They built, they put a home pod subwifor in the middle of the reflecting pool. There's a plunger in the middle of the reflecting pool. I said we were only going to take 30 seconds on this. That makes what makes ripples so that it doesn't look too creepy. We've landed on the ripple plunger at Apple Park. And that company needs to make a roku app. Just go look at a Roku and just imagine Johnny I've looking at Roku and be like, I will make software for this platform.

Anyway, that's happening. Tim Cook said it today. We talked about a lot yesterday. Dieter, you spent a lot of time talking to Google. I did. About Assistant, what they're doing. Today is the first day the show floor is open here. The Google House is open.

Everyone's been walking through it. There's a small world ride. It's very jarring. Have you gone on it? I actually haven't. I've only seen the videos online. The 360 video, yeah. There's a really long line to get in.

I don't feel like waiting. This isn't Disneyland. Also, it broke down for a minute today. Did you get stuck in there? I did not get stuck in the Google ride. We're going tomorrow because why should you push the button is taping at the Google stage tomorrow, so we're going to try to go on it. But you spent time with them talking actually about Assistant.

Yes. What's happening? They have today announced something on the order like 12 or 15 things. And I'm like not going to remember everything, but you can Google Assistant on Dish Hopper. they have a new thing called Google Assistant Connect, where they want to make accessories that are relatively cheap that can be commanded by the Google Assistant, like E-ink displays or buttons like Alexa buttons

or like smart clocks, like the Alexa smart clock. Basically, there's no way to talk about it without saying like Alexa. They're doing all that. They have a new alarm clock that's like the echo spot. It's a cute little Lenovo alarm clock that is small and it also will like turn bright in the morning to wake you up before it makes noise.

They, man, there's so much stuff. They reaffirmed their commitment to working on Sonos. We saw the demo. We went. So Google Assistant on Sonos works. We heard it. Yeah. Kind of saw it.

It's a little buggy still. It's only a beta. They're not giving us a date. There's no date. They refused to give us a date because the last time they tried that, they just didn't hit it. Yeah. There's all sorts of insanely nerdy details about what made it takes along. I don't know if it seems like the,

The one detail that we did here, which is really interesting, is a Google assistant device, Google designs like the whole thing. So in particular, what they design is the microphones and how the microphones work and how the audio from the two microphones get sent to the Google Cloud. And then Google thinks about how to detect a voice. Like a lot of stuff that happens very fast. It's very impressive. If you're just like abstract from whatever it is happening. Sonos built their own microphones in their own voice detection. algorithms and their own bean forming. And so Google was like, we had to be okay with that. And it really feels like the main thing that happened was like Google went to therapy. To be like, this is fine. This is a relationship. They're going to be different than me. Sometimes we don't both want to stay out all night.

Yeah, but they're not so happy with it. They're willing to have both Alexa and Google hot words be active on the same speaker at the same time. Yeah. Like that is a bridge too far. Is it? Yes. So here is Sonos's reason that you do. don't want it. You are sitting

in your home and your son of speaker starts going and eh, eh, eh, and, and both you and somebody else in your home don't know why it's making that noise and you need to tell it to stop. Do you say, hey Google stop? Or do you say, Alexa, stop? Because if you get it wrong,

it keeps going, eh, eh, eh. Right? And not only just keep making that noise, I can hear that. It also, you have to hear the wrong assistant say, I don't understand, while it keeps making that noise. That's the argument against it. All right.

I don't agree with it. I don't know if I fully agree with it, because I think that's a super niche case. It's in like an edge case. Yeah. Why is it beeping in the first place? Because you asked it to set an alarm. But who did you ask? Well, but you asked Alexa, but I don't know that.

And so I walk in the room because the thing is making noise and you're off somewhere else in the world. This implies so much. It implies, for example. You've got a roommate. You've got a house. You're setting timers. You're organized. You're organized enough to know that something should happen at a certain time from now.

Yeah. It's a lot. There's a lot to ask just in general. Google also announced Samsung TV integration. So now you can get a Samsung TV that has Airplay and Bixby and Google and Alexa, I believe. Yeah. The Samsung TV literally do everything. Are those all active at the same time?

I don't know. There's works with versus works on. It doesn't, yeah, on the Samsung TV, only Bixby is there on the TV itself. But if you have a Google Home or if you have an echo in your house, you can talk to those devices to control the TV. Right. They made a kitchen aid display that you can run under the faucet if that's the thing you want to do. I get it. I mean, like, that makes sense.

The smart display is the biggest pitch for them is like throw them in the kitchen. So, you know, make it. We have an echo show in our kitchen. That's actually where we set all of our timers. Yeah. And we're aware that we should ask Lexa to stop them. We don't just yell random names. to stop our timers?

But you might. What if it also supported Bixby and Syria and everything else? If there were like eight assistants on your speaker, you'd never know which one. Well, I think Bixby should stop in general. Oh, well, okay. Well, he's not issues. Man, there's more.

Interpreter mode. So you can now use a Google Home or any smart display device to do translation. Were any of you there when Shannon made her video? I was not, unfortunately. Okay, so you should go watch it on YouTube. It's a good video. It's Shanlau, who speaks.

Mandarin. So, like, she was, like, out speaking Chinese to the, and then there's a person who's dressed as a bellhop. And I just like, did she locate a bellhop? Wait, an actual bellhop? Like, the great Budapest, the grandmere? He's like, yeah, it's like a very formal hotel uniform. Uh-huh. And they're just discussing. This is a Googler. I don't know. No, the hotel employee. Oh. Right. Yeah. It's like, it's like a remarkable video. Like, everyone should watch this video. And I just haven't seen Shannon or anybody in our video team. Like, we've all been busy today. So I was like watching this video on a cab.

I was like, did we travel back in time to the 40s to do this Google interpreter video? Because it's, you should watch it. It did it medium job. Yeah. It thought, it thought I'm allergic to shrimp meant like I like sand. Yeah, which is dangerous. Yeah. On the scale of things that could kill you.

They're not exclusionary. You can. Google Assistant now can. let you use your voice to reply to more apps than it did before. So it used to just be like Android to use the ad reply. Now it can do more deep replies. And it will add punctuation without you having to say the word comma or period. And so the question becomes, will the Google Assistant add a period to your texts?

Yeah, that will ruin my personal brand. That's making you sound curt. Right? Yeah. Or like I don't even like it when it auto capitalizes things. Yeah. Like I will, if I voice dictate a text and it's capitalized, I will move cursor back and change to capitalization.

Really? Yeah. You want to sound like a fun, chill dad. Yeah. Yeah. You got roasted just now, Dan. Yeah. Popp on us don't capital.

Listen. Listen, this is just, this is just what happens. Get roasted. Did you eat it? Did you eat a sandwich in like lowercase to make you seem chill? That's a lot. No, the biggest news of all, which doesn't seem like it, but I think it is the most important news is Google Maps trend of running everything.

inside Google Maps continues. Now, you can not only text inside Google Maps, you can now use the Google Assistant inside Google Maps. And here's why I think this matters. How many iPhone owners have actually installed the Google Assistant app? It's me. It's one. It's one.

It's Neil I Patel. Of those who have done it, how many used it two days after they installed it? I'm going to go with zero. If I'm the only one, then I can conclusively. How many iPhone owners have installed it? Google Maps. How many of them use it when they drive? Like Google has basically taken the assistant and made a whole bunch of iPhone users have this thing in front of them when they drive all the time now. And they're going to push it pretty aggressively because everything at Google Maps is pretty

aggressive and kind of annoying right now. And they're going to get more adoption of the Google Assistant inside Google Maps because they've put it inside Maps on the iPhone. So you can do things like we were actually playing with it tonight. It already started rolling. out, you can use it now, and you can say, like, find me a gas station on my route, or what's the nearest gas station on my route, which seems like something Google Maps. You can play music. You can play podcasts. But, yeah, it's there.

But you can play. It does the little four dots. Within Google Maps. Yeah, within Google Maps. You ask a Google Assistant to play a podcast, it'll go to Google Podcasts in the Cloud via Google Assistant, and then the Google Assistant are playing the podcast inside Google Maps. Like, Google Maps has become the new Android. That's great.

You're laughing, but it's true. It's awful. I mean, it's the product. Is it? I mean, it kind of also implies that I'll still use a voice assistant, which I won't. So, I mean. You live in New York. You don't try.

Yeah. Would you have a voice assistant in your house? I don't. Would you ever? No, I deliberately don't. I mean, I've seen all those articles about like the mysterious laughing Alexa and I just don't need that in my life. I'm paranoid enough, as is. So like how how much utility would you have to get out of use like I think if I did drive then I think that might be useful like I'm driving and I want to listen to a podcast like then I can see myself using that but definitely not in my house like if I'm in my house like I'll use my hands to do things like I don't like asking an app to do another thing for me like I'll just do it directly.

Meanwhile the idea that I can use my voice to like set a timer for two minutes is enough for me to give up all of my privacy. Oh yeah. Absolutely. And I'm like, I want both of them running at the same time. I want to give away my privacy to two at the same time. No, I mean, all of my kitchen appliances are dirty. Because my hands are like dirty. I'll just like press the buttons, whatever, like get all over it.

But yeah. I will say that some voice control is so, Dan was making fun of me earlier because I insist. Was it you? Someone was making fun because I put Cavo, like, remote controls in my parents' house. And it's like, a little buggy. And my wife definitely texted me today and was like, the TV breaks every time you leave the house. But it's great because I,

because I installed beta software on my products, which is like, finally the problem. But I put it in my parents' house, and so they get to say, like, turn on the TV to NBC, and then it will, like, do a whole bunch of stuff, and then NBC will just, like, be on the TV. Yeah, like five minutes later, but yes.

You know, get a cup of coffee, sit down, you're settled in. I think that is, like, remarkably effective. If you don't know how to use the TV. stuff, right? If you're, if like, you're not the kind of person who, like, wants to, like, sit there and monkey with apps or understand how a Roku interface works or... This is, this is where I have to say that's the exact pitch that Samsung has for Bixby. Yeah. And, like, it's a good idea. I mean, Bixby is not a great excuse me. But here's a problem. Bigsby's the only assistant who's not invited to the house. On a scale of 1 to 10,

turning on NBC on a TV with multiple gadgets is like a six of difficulty. Right. Now, no, No, just with your standard setup of like how many remotes do you have, what your cable box, input on the TV, call it a six. Like just stay with me. The setup you're describing. What is the top of the scale? Is it 10? Okay.

Yeah. The setup you're describing is like a three. But between six and three to set to set up, turn on NBC is a 9.9. Yeah, yeah. That's absolutely true. And like everybody that wants to get to the three has to go through 9.9 or have a son named Neelah Patel who would do it for them. That's the problem with all the smart assistant stuff.

Trying to find the right setting in Google Assistant or Google Home is impossible. First of all, you don't have to have a son, and that son does not have to share my name. It's just a child. Just, I just want to put that out there. The necessary condition is not that you have a boychild with my name. It's just a child. You know, there's a service. I don't know where are this.

Boychild admiolai.com. No, there's like a, there's literally like an Uber for grandkids. Okay. Where like older people get to like push a button and like a younger person comes to their house and like does stuff. It's true. It's true story. So you're right about the 9.9. But the dream is you walk into your house and you say turn on the playoffs.

Yeah. And it doesn't even know if you're talking about football playoffs, the NBA playoffs, like whatever. It's just like kind of knows what you want. And like a bunch of stuff happens. I think Google is way closer to that than Amazon. Yeah, but Google is also, the reason that I am not like 100%, yeah, Google is going to win this is Google is so thirsty. They're like, they're so tryhard at CES. They build a giant booth with a ride, a small world ride.

And they're like, they covered the monorail and they're, wow, look at us. Where Amazon quietly, like, sure, they're 100 million versus Google's billion. But Google's billion doesn't count because it's just phones in terms of, no. numbers of devices. Amazon's just like quietly like, yeah, everything works with us and we don't care and we'll do whatever you want. It's fine. And here's a chip that you can buy for three cents that'll make Alexa work with your thing. Right. They're just, Amazon is quietly everywhere. And that's a way more confident move. Like the that, that, then Google just like, look at us. I did see a little bit of Amazon presence on the show floor today. It was in the form

of a banana stand. Nice. They were literally just giving out. The blues. We're here. We're Yeah, the blues are here. They were literally just giving out bananas, and it had an Amazon sticker on it. Wow. Yeah. So, that's hilarious. But you can extend that data to what you were saying about how Google's thirsty and Amazon's quiet into how these assistants actually are behaving in your home and how you use them. If you live with both of them and use both of them for a lot of the same things, you'll find that it's a lot easier to command Alexa for everyday things, like turning lights on and like controlling music and things like that. And it's just kind of does it.

The hot word doesn't suck or what? The hot word doesn't suck. It doesn't always respond back to you with like, okay, turning seven lights on. It just goes ding and the lights come on, right? Like, whereas Google, it's like you got to say Google every time. It's got to respond back to you every time. It's just a very like thirsty and like kind of like frustrating thing to have to deal with when you're using these over and over and over again, really integrating them into your life.

So like even though I agree with Neelai that Google has more of the pieces to make this happen, it's more pleasant using Alexa most of the time. So like Google doesn't have the user experience down yet. But they do have the depth of knowledge that Alexa doesn't have. So like you look at the chart of like ask a random question to a thing and Google will get it right more often. Sure. But think about it like, oh, I've definitely been drinking because here's my idea. So like the goal is like they replace a butler.

Like you have a butler there in your house. It's got shoes. It's a dog that wears shoes. A butler that wear shoes. It's a dog with shoes. Like very obviously makes me is the goal. No, like the goal is like you have this like Butler is like caring for you, right? Literally the way Alexa's architected is more things happen locally.

Right. So you're like Alexa turn on the lights. It actually sends it over UP and P on your local network. It never goes to the cloud. These things just happen. It's like in your house. Alexis in your house. Run.

Google is like super cloud oriented. So you're like Google turn on the light. It goes to a cloud. It wants to talk to Belkin's API service. It comes back down. And that lag, that round trip lag through the cloud is actually very slow. And it makes Google seem super thirsty because, A, you're saying the brand name. And then Google's like, let me think about your request.

And, like, just that lag because Google is all happening in the cloud. And, like, there's some, I think there's some, like, UP&P stuff that Assistant will do. But its default is to figure it out in a cloud. Whereas Alex's default. Like, you never actually have to install. skills. Like I have... Well, yeah, but that's how Google was architected from the jump. You don't install actions. No, no, but I mean, like, I have, I think it's a wemo outlet

in my house. Yeah. And I never installed the skill for Alexa. I just said, discover the device. I hate to tell you this. But it went locally. That only exists for the top 200 skills. They've made those automatic. The rest you still have to install. No, but there's no one by one. No, no skill at all. There's no cloud service. I never set up the cloud service. They only did that for the top like one or 200 things that work with Alexa. Everything else is still a skill. It's not as automatic as Google's is. Right, so I'm with you. But what I'm saying is that automation?

Yeah. Is Alexis doing it on the local network without ever talking to a cloud service? Google's automation is like, we are aware of all the cloud services. So Google, like, lives in the cloud. A bunch of Alexa stuff just like lives in your house. Let me step back. That just makes it faster. A half a step.

Yeah. This argument that we're having is fascinating in the context of the fact that we've been talking about Apple, like, being the surprise of the show for putting airplane and everything. but Siri is a non-entity in this discussion. Yeah. We've joked about Bixby. Like, we're creeping up and making a joke about Cortana.

We're talking about Alexa versus Google in a deeply nerdy way. And Siri is just nowhere. Yeah. But there is a bunch of home kit stuff here. There is a bunch of home kit stuff. And that's because... Right. Which is different.

But it's, like, also good. Like, I prefer using HomeKit to control my smart home. HomeKit by far is the fastest. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yeah. If you are an iPhone user and you want to set up stuff in your home,

you are much, going to be much happier if you get home kit compatible stuff. It integrates with your iPhone easier. You can use your and stuff like that. And it's faster. And we are seeing a ton of home kit stuff here at the show, particularly because Apple talked about this a long time ago that they were changing the way HomeKit certification worked to be software-only-based. That finally rolled out mid-2018, so here are all the products that are actually using it. Yeah.

So we're seeing power strips and light switches and fan switches and all this stuff that have had, Alexa and Google Assistant integration for years are finally getting HomeKit as well. Right. Yeah. HomeKit is by far the fast. It's like instantaneously fast, whereas even asking Alexa to turn off my Christmas lights, it's like... It's instantaneously fast as long as you can like find the right button in the stupid Apple Home app, which is the worst. Yes, I think Apple should read it on its entire interface.

Okay. On that note, we're going to read an ad. Okay. When we come back, we're talking about some gadgets. It's going to be great. This episode of Verstcast is brought to you about my podcast. Microsoft Surface Pro 6, the laptop to get if you need to get stuff done with an eighth generation Intel core processor.

It's the fastest, most powerful Surface Pro ever. And it just under 2.5 pounds of Surface lets you work wherever you want. Your office at the airport or just hanging out on the couch, Dan. With up to 13 and a half hours of battery life, whatever you're doing, you'll do it uninterrupted, Daniel, do everything you need, even if it's a million things at once with the power and speed of the new Surface Pro 6. Let's talk about some gadgets. Yeah.

Domi, I want to start with you. Okay. I think you've been seeing the silliest, most interesting gadgets here so far. Sure. And I want to start with the Foldomade. Oh, man. Which you saw last year. I did.

You saw two laundry folding gadgets last year. It was one of two laundry folding machines I saw last year. Only one survived the year. Only one survived this year because I broke the other one last year. It was $16,000. That one actually, they said they used AI to pick up the clothes and determine which way to best fold. and then I put in a Verge, like a black Verge t-shirt, and it ended up confusing its cameras.

So it like broke the thing and then a bunch of engineers had to run in and like figure out how to detangle it from the machine. So that company is not here this year, and instead we have Foldemate, which is back for the third time with a working prototype. It actually works this year.

And it was like kind of impressive, you know? I'm eating my shorts. And I mean, it takes five seconds to fold those shoes. shorts. It's like very, I can imagine them using it in like retail stores for like retail employees. We have to do a ton of folding or in like laundromats, you know, but I definitely wouldn't have it in my home because it costs $1,000. And it's the size of, you know, like a washer, an entire washer. So if you want your shorts folded, do you just, can you just like ball it up and chuck them in a hole? That's what I usually do. Me? Oh, you mean like with the fold of the machine. Okay.

Well, wait, wait, wait, wait. When you want your shorts folded, do you ball them up? Do you ball them up? and chuck him in a hole. That's what I usually do. I mean, what kind of hole do you have in your apartment? I live in New York. There's holes everywhere. It was a lot.

Anyway. You have to feed them in. Yes, you have to individually clip each item on, which is, you know, not ideal. But I was putting in like a pair of pants today. And then the CEO was like, oh, you have to put it in this way, like backwards, upside down.

So I did that and it worked. But are they going to ship it for $1,000? That's to be seen. Maybe, you know. You're four. Yeah. I have to say, I saw, you know, our footage and I saw you do it. And it spit out, you put the t-shirt in, it sucked it in five minutes.

Five seconds later, it spit out the folded t-shirt. Five minutes. Yeah, five minutes. The AI is like, I don't know. But it did you fold it very good. Right, okay. It's like huge. There's no AI in this machine.

It's really, I don't know what's inside it. It's got to be some sort of like robotic. I don't know. It's a child. I was like, what is the catch this year? Because it is big enough to fit a child, but I'm sure it's not a child. The most innocent thing said it is. I saw the thing spin out and I was looked at it.

I'm like, to fit that in my drawer, I have to refold it. Like it very much depends on how neatly you clip it in. Really? Yeah. I mean, so there's a lot of effort involved on your part, you know. More than folding the shirt in the first place. Yeah, actually, like, when I'm folding my shirt, when I'm folding my laundry at home, usually I'll just like do it in front of the TV.

Like I'm sitting on my couch and I can take my time with it. But I mean, the folder, you have to be standing to clip on each item. And I don't want to be standing when I do that. So the thing I think about CS every year is what is like, what's the thing here that like the local news will take away from CS? Right. Or we were just having a drink with our friend David Pierce. Like what's the thing that like the Wall Street Journal is going to be like at CES, Folded Laundria, thing of the, you know, like, what's that headline that hits like that really big? And it's, it is like the laundry folding machine.

Bell Helicopters is here. They have a giant fiberglass, fake Uber car. There is a yacht in the North Hall. Yeah. There's like a bunch of, so the question is, is this like the dumb thing that happens for the local news? Or is this like a real thing? I really think it would be helpful for, you know, retailers, maybe like in the back room and like, you know, people can hold clothes in the back. That's like the kiss of death

You're like this should be great for like lazy gap employees It's like that's a tiny market I'm always thinking of the lazy gap employees Okay So that's I just wanted It's like many years of you covering the laundry machines I can't wait to cover it next year Yeah they're gonna try again

They're like look no baby inside the machine But you also covered a bunch of really interesting Tabletty things Yeah I'm very interested in your take on this new WACOM tablet Okay so Wackham has a new Simtec 16 that is pretty much their most affordable tablet ever. So it's meant to be for people like me who, I mean, I mostly just just draw like pretty simple 2D cartoons. So I've had the same old like bamboo tablet. It's like three years old and I eat soup on top of it sometimes. So I mean,

I treat it like shit. And then this tablet bridges the gap between, you know, these amateur like maybe hobbyists, people who'd offer fun to their next big, like, creative device. And before that price difference was, like, so steep. Like, maybe the cheapest Wacom tablet you could have gotten was, like, a thousand dollar in, like a Cintique 22 or something. And this is, like, the most affordable it's ever been. And I think it's going to be, like, pretty popular for, you know, most artists. Why is it more affordable?

Is it smaller? So it's not 4K, like their other Centee. tablets. Yeah, it's 2K, but it is, it does give you the sense that you are kind of stepping up your creative career. Like there's a difference between drawing on a tablet, like the bamboo that I have, which is, you know, you're drawing on a separate tablet that connects to the computer with a cable and you have to be looking at the screen while you're drawing where a Sintique 16 is like a pen input. Like they have such like difficult naming devices. Like this is a pen display whereas a bamboo is a pen tablet. So a pen display lets you draw it directly on the screen. And yeah, it's just super

affordable. I think it's probably going to be like a really good. How much is it? It's $650. Okay. And that's super affordable in this market. It is affordable for Wacom, which is, it's expensive. But I mean, all of their product quality is great. There's a lot of like cheaper like Chinese tablets like Kuiang that make the same thing for a lot cheaper, like hundreds of dollars cheaper. But WACOM, you know, there is that, you know, kind of brand name value and a lot of like industry professionals like use it. Like Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse was made with, you know, Wackham products as are like pretty much everything you see like on CES. Like has to be a, it had to have been designed like on a Wackham. Yeah.

Okay. So stupidest question number. Okay. This thing is 650 or so, right? Yeah. I'm an artist. I'm pretty good. I had some old busted thing and I'm ready to go buy something new.

why do I need to spend 60 in this instead of 329 plus a $99 Apple Pencil on an iPad? Okay. The iPad, the $329 iPad is, it's not very fast. Oh, okay. I think, wasn't it like you can only have three apps like running at once? Well, there's that. But like just like the drawing experience is different too. The drawing experience is different because it's a lot smaller.

The screen is way smaller. But, I mean, that iPad is really great. I mean, I generally think it's a great new product for artists. And it really makes having a tablet, like, super affordable. But I personally don't draw on an iPad just because I don't really like the experience of drawing on such a small screen. Well, I have like a 9.7, I think. I should have gotten the big one. But also, it just doesn't have the keyboard shortcuts that I use.

So when I use my bamboo tablet, I'm constantly, like, doing Control Z on my keyboard. and you just don't have that flexibility with the iPad. The Sintique mirrors your display, right? Like you put Photoshop on it. Like the iPad is like still an iPad. Right. The iPad doesn't have Photoshop. Yeah.

That's the biggest thing. It doesn't have the software. If Apple built the software that let the iPad do the thing the Sintique did, I think this conversation would be different. Right. But I don't think that's ever going to happen just because we've already seen the version of Photoshop that's coming to the iPad and it's not the same thing. Right.

Yeah, there's a real wamp-womp with the iPad. Every time I talk to Dommy about it, she's like, yeah, this is nice. It's fine. Honestly, I don't touch it unless I'm traveling. Wow. Wow. Okay, and then you also looked at something called the Islate. Icekin slate repaper dash the slate.

What? That's what I have written down here. Okay, so it's just the slate repaper, and it's made by a French startup called I-Skin. And they actually launched their first product in 2015 as a Kickstarter. And this is the fourth generation of their tablet, which you can put in like a piece of paper and draw on top of it with any pen or pencil that you own. And it comes with this magnetic ring that you fit onto your own tools. And there's magnets on the tablet, which show like where you're drawing. So the strokes show up on the screen.

Is it also pressure sensitive? Yes. So the newest generation is pressure sensitive. and they actually sold the last one like in the MoMA design store. It's like really cool. But yeah, I tested it out a couple years ago and back then it was a little bit buggy. But I tried it out again this year and I really like it. And you can also unplug it from the computer and, you know, take it with you to a cafe.

It's portable. And when you draw all the, all the strokes get saved inside of the SD card that's like, it gets saved internally. So when you come back to your computer and you plug it in, it'll like auto. automatically upload. What is it upload? Like what's the format? I think it you can export it into like pretty much any format, file format, but it only works with the companion app so you can't work, you can't use like Photoshop with it. Got it. Yeah. And the companion app isn't like, you know, super art friendly, I would say. But it is a neat concept and, you know, maybe good for like parents who don't trust their kids with iPads just yet or, you know, it's like for me. Wait, I don't trust

an iPad, I'm going to give you this like magnet ring to put on a pencil and like walking the streets or New York sketch it? I mean... This is how I'm raising my child. Yeah. You don't get an iPad. You must sketch and sketch alone. That's how you learn. Yeah. And they'll be like, what's a computer? Wow. Well, poor

Max. Did you like it? Yeah. Okay, and it's also really cool because you don't have to draw on paper with it. You can also just use it as a regular tablet. And it's $200, which is about the same price as like a whackum Intuos. Yeah.

So I think it's great. Cool. Is it shipping or is it like out in the world? The third generation is already out, but the fourth one is coming out sometime in September. Okay. So it weighs away. It's a little bit, yeah, a ways away. We saw a prototype today, but I think, you know, the final way.

It's like the true CS story. It's like, here's some prototype that kind of works. Just trust us. Don't worry about it. The last gadget I really want to talk to you about is the Baco, emo. Yes. What is the bottom email? Emo short for emotional.

Of course. Of course. And it's a little robot that honestly like, okay, it doesn't have Alexa and maybe that's a good thing. But it's kind of meant for checking up on your elderly, the elderly folks. It comes with four sensors that are detached from this little robot. It's a really cute little robot. It looks like a snowman. and there's four different sensors that detect light, movement.

It sends out notifications through a companion app. Of course. Of course. And it tells you like, oh, like, grandma left the house today. Oh, my God. But it's really cute. And it reacts to the tone of your voice. So if you're like, I don't like that.

It'll put its head down and make a sad noise. It doesn't talk, but you can record voice messages on an app and it'll play like through the robot. And, yeah, apparently, it's been out for some time in Japan, so they work with the security company called Secom, which is like their ADT, I guess. And apparently the elderly folk over there can speak with those like Secom customer care people whenever they're feeling lonely, like, through this robot. It's got this like play button where you can like hold it down and it can be like, hello. Wow. Yeah, it's not for like emerging.

emergencies or anything like that. It's just like people who are standing by who like want to keep, you know, the elderly like. I will say a theme of CS that I've noticed is like the tech industry's recognition that like mortality is inevitable. Yeah. Like Andrew, was it you at our producer Andrew sitting here? Was it you at Enveiled who was like, so many devices here are designed to like tell you that you're sleeping shitty and that when you fall down your children should be notified. Yeah. There's a lot of fall detects. Like not just stuff you wear, but like robots with cameras that are just like, watching you all the time and if they hear or see you fall, they'll like, tune over to be like, are you okay over there? And then you say no, and then they like call for a house. And this one's like, are you a lonely, elderly person? Yeah. This corporation will keep you company

by talking to a snowman. It's sometimes sad. And they will Uber or a grandkid over to you. By the way, the Uber, I googled this while we were talking. Yeah. I'm so sorry to report this. It's bad news. Not real. The Uber for grandkids service is called Papa. No. No. How does that spelled? P-A-P-A. Alexis Hohannian is an investor. The reason I read about it is because he was recently profiled.

It's like a thing. You should read the profile of Alexis. He's like, it's a good profile. He's a good dude. Like, whatever. There's a whole Johnny Johnny thing here that we could do if we wanted to. But Papa is a service that operates in Florida.

Of course. It has to be Florida. Yeah. We don't yet have robot snowmen who are sometimes sad for them. I thought you were going to say the service shut down. No, no.

It's very real. It's doing quite a lot. I can tell. It's good for them. But I'm sorry. Oh, but yeah, I should mention that this robot is made by the same people who brought to you brought us the tail, the cat tail, the wagging cat tail. Oh, the cat tail is amazing.

Yeah. And that pillow is also kind of like, for therapy purposes, it's for keeping like people in nursing homes happy. Yeah. And it's very charming. Can you tell the listeners what the cattail robot is? The cattail robot is a pillow that is shaped like a headless cat. And when you pet it, it kind of purrs and wags its tail robot is.

tail. Yes. That's it. It was good. That's the end. We spent a lot of time with it. We really did. Yeah.

Everyone in our office was like quite taken with it. I think Jake took it home. Somebody took it home and their actual cat was afraid of it. That's amazing. All right. We're CS gadgets. Daniel. Yes.

We're hard shift from cat robot to gaming PCs. You can still hug a gaming PC. You can hug a gaming PC. It won't hug you back. It'll be really hot and warm though. Jake has also taken a gaming PC home. his cat was afraid of it. But you want to talk about the Area 51M,

which is quite a laptop. It is quite a lot. It's barely a laptop. Like, I mean, it's like one of those gaming PCs that's like, you don't move,

but it is a laptop in that. It is an all in one thing with a clamshell that opens. And yes, you could play it on your lap for like 90 minutes before the battery dies, which is like every gaming PC, right?

But this one, you can actually take out the processor and take out the graphics chip and upgrade them in the future, which like you could never, never do with a laptop before because Alienware says like, you know, people want to invest in these computers. They cost thousands of dollars. But then in two years, they're outdated. You can't upgrade the GPU. And then you're like, you're getting like snipped by a 12 year old in Fortnite 4 or

whatever it is. That's not because my GPU sucks. Well, I mean, yes. But you can't. I am personally but you can now blame the GPU and then go buy a new laptop. So, so this one, they put them, they put the processor and the GPU on these modular boards. And, And you can take the whole thing apart really easily. It has like standard screws. It doesn't use that weird stuff that Apple uses. It doesn't have like stickers that like get in your way and stuff. And you can just open it up and you can take these boards out and you could put in, in theory, a new board with the new chip on it and pop it in there and upgrade your computer.

Will they actually make these boards? That is like the question. They say they will make them. Like right now, the machine that we saw, the Area 51M that will be able to be purchased soon or whatever, has a desktop core I9. processor and it has the new RTX 2080 GPU. Like this thing is a monster. Like it's, it ain't going to be cheap.

So it's a tower PC with like a foldable LCD at the side. Basically. Yeah. But, you know, in two years when the 2080 is like old and creaky and you want to get a new one, the question is... You don't need a new screen.

You don't need a new motherboard. Right. Your keyboard's fine. Yeah, exactly. Your screen's fine. You know, you just want to upgrade your GPU. The GPU has to fit on that modular piece that Dell designed.

And so the question is, will NVIDIA's next generation GPU fit on that modular board. Alienware, Dell, says if it does, we're doing it. We will make an upgrade. If it doesn't,

and it's like a technical constraint, we can't, you know, make it, like, fit on there. We're kind of stuck. We don't know,

because we don't know their roadmap. But, like, they're like, as long as it fits on the board, we're going to put it in. Denson seems like a talkative. Yeah,

no, I don't know. You know, it's a good question. All right. They seem pretty confident that they can, like, you know, keep the same size boards for the processors, you know, for a little while because those don't really change size all that often.

I think the GPU is the big question mark, but the GPU is also the one that people want to upgrade the most often. So I don't know. It's kind of weird. It's a really cool idea. It looks really cool. It looks really neat. Of course, it's got some lighting on it, but it's got some better design than Alienware's had lately.

And, like, you know, the fact that they are actually trying to make this problem of gaming laptops that cost a ton of money and then get outdated so quickly. they're trying to solve it, so they're doing a clever way to do it, whether it's going to be successful or not. I don't know. We'll see. But yeah, it's probably the most interesting laptop here. And there's a lot of laptops here.

There are a lot of laptops here. I'm quite taken with the fact that Del fixed the XPS 13. It only took him four years. Four years of me complaining about the webcam being in the wrong spot. It was you. They like moved it over. It was on the left side. They're like, oh, we'll move it to the middle.

And I'm like, nope, nope, that ain't it, guys. And then they finally put it back on top. You know, it's exciting about this, Dan? in another four years, they're going to switch away from 16 by 9 screens. Maybe. If only, I could be happy. I feel like there's a bunch of Lenovo news. You actually have this weird leather HP PC here.

Yeah, this was not announced at CES. I know, but I'm just staring at it. It is a very cool PC. Because you are aggressively using a leather computer right now. I am aggressively using a leather computer. And it's pretty cool. You know, it's a laptop that speaks to my own heart. When something is pretty cool, you say, it's pretty cool in a questioning way.

I like it. I like the leather. I like it too. It looks cool. We're not here. You're fine. All right. Well, Lenovo did a bunch of stuff.

So Lenovo's got a bunch of new stuff. The S940. The S940. We should talk about that for a second. Yeah. So we were talking about it for the podcast. Sometimes yoga books are, they're bad.

And you never know. Like, Lenovo would be like, right, here's the new yoga. It's high end. And you're like, sweet. And then you're like, oh, you lied this time. And sometimes they give you a new yoga book. And you're like, it's high end. And you're like, oh,

Actually, yes, it is. Good job, guys. And the S-940, so far as we could tell, is definitely the high-end one of these. They fix the bezel problem. Just like Dell finally fixed the webcam on the XPS 13, Lenovo fixed the bezel problem. It's another one with a nigger notch. It's got a naga notch. It doesn't have a big chin at the bottom like the other ones had.

We're trying to decide. There's only one right answer. So when you have a webcam at the top of a laptop and it actually sticks up from the top of the laptop. I'm trying to ESP the right answer to you right now. Like, like, you can barely see it in this picture. Why would they do that? There we go. Why would they do that?

Can you put it back? No, but like, you either have the entire top of it be just an even hunk of plastic, or you like slimmed bezels down so it looks like you've got a nice, bigger screen on a smaller, smaller bezel on the top. And then you just make a little at the top, like Star Wars at the top. And the question is, what do you call that bump at the top of the screen? I call it a handle for opening it. And I think it should be called a nil.

nega notch because instead of a notch going down into the screen, it's a reverse notch. That's a good one. I like it now. Negan notch. All that ESP energy. I'm exhausted now. I've been concentrating in Dominion's direction for like seven minutes. I have to like lie down on the floor.

Like a superhero is like out of juice. His pitch really sold me. Yeah. It's got the nega notch and it has a 2.5D screen so the glass actually curves back a little bit, which makes the bezels look even smaller. Yeah. We've also seen this on the Pixel Slate, which is a garbage device, but this seems good. It's also probably on most phones that you've maybe used.

It reminds me of a manila folder. Yeah. Yeah. There's a little chrome tab. They should put it on the side. It's a Chrome tab. They should put it on the side like a Chrome tab. No, no, no.

Keep it in the middle. We don't need them moving the webcam. The webcam needs a key word. I don't know why it reminds me of Star Wars, but there's something. Yeah, I don't understand that reference. No, there's something about the half-trap of the, the archedal shape. the design of the physical thing where it's just like there's a random trapezoid

just for the hell of it. Yeah. That feels like Star Wars. I agree. I get that vibe. All of this would have been a great conversation if you didn't insist on calling it the Neganotch. But now I'm just not going to engage with it.

A month from now, you're going to see a laptop and you're going to think in your head, oh, they got a Naga Natch. The Nognegeonch also has Windows Hello. It is fully insepted into your mind. We used to be such good friends. I'm sorry. And now it's overrides. And I just want to ever know this is where it ended.

Okay. lastly, Dieter. Oh, God. There has been some more 5G drama today. Five gee? I think I'm the only one on our staff who sat through the entire Verizon press conference. No, Chris Welch was there in person. The only one on this podcast who sat through the entire.

It's true. Chris Walsh was there in person. He said the only thing this was good for was taking photos of Hans Vesberg, who's the new CEO of Verizon. So Hans Vesberg. Who is? The new CEO of Verizon. Right. He took over.

About six months ago. Oh, he's the one who came in and was like, this Oath AOL Yahoo thing is dumb. He was the one. He was previously the CTO. Yeah. He is Swedish. He definitely pronounces it five key in his like adorable Swedish accent.

Yeah. Before, and I just, I just need to let everyone know this. He is one of the first executives at Verizon that like hold this position. It's not like an engineering background. He's like the CFO of Erickson. And then this is true.

is directly from the Wikipedia page with citations to resources. He was previously the chairman of the Swedish Handball Federation. Wow. No way. This is a fact. He also showed up for the keynote wearing a black t-shirt with the V Verizon logo. Oh yeah, he got John Ledgered out.

Yeah, he's like trying to be John Ledger. It's not, not, you're not that, I mean, not that John Ledger is cool. Sorry, he's not. He's a Swedish handball executive. Yeah. What does that entail? But he's also like, huh? A handball executive?

I have never. I have never met a Swedish person who wasn't cooler than me. He left the Swedish Handball Federation to serve as president of the Swedish Olympic Committee from 2016-19. He had previously played semi-pro handball in Brazil. I'm sure he was like running his career at Erickson doing the same time. But it's just like very fun. Anyway, Hans Vesberg, just imagine a handball player, which everyone can do instinctively. He's on stage, he's wearing his cool Verizon shirt.

He's got a cool hair. He's got a little asking to sync five gear over and over again. Verizon today took a shot at 18T, like super. Super hard. Yeah. Sprint today took a shot at AT&T super hard. When you are getting made fun of by Sprint, you've definitely lost. So if you don't remember from yesterday's episode of the Vergecast, AT&T is lying about 5G on its phones.

They literally issued a software update to the Galaxy S8 active, the S8 active, not the S9, just the S8 active, which is like the rugged Galaxy S8, the V, the LGV40 and like two or three other phones. it literally just changes the 4G icon to a 5GE icon. Yep. And so all the other major carriers in America are now like, they're lying to you. When other major carriers are being like, lies are bad. I love this. It's like the carrier that has not one, not two, but three different plans it calls unlimited is telling you that you're lying to your customers.

Lies are bad. T-Mull, which previously had lied to its own customers about G's. started this. So this is like the context of Hans Westberg on stage show. Yeah. No one believes the G's. No one believes the G's. So he's like,

here's the real five key. It's like how I pronounce it. Here's a real five. And this is true. This is a real thing that happened. He's like, here's a 10 minute technical discussion about how it's going to give you 10x battery life

and super speeds, a low latency. Verizon, if you don't remember, owns Yahoo. So they had like Yahoo. sports on stage. They brought like a Laker, like a Los Angeles Laker on stage and he was wearing like a VR

headset and the camera in the headset was streaming to the cloud and then back to the displays over 5G so that to prove how low latency is and they made him shoot like baskets. It's just a lot. It was a lot. Yeah. And he was like, look how low latency it is. Like he's shooting baskets, it's fine.

Great, cool. And then he's like, we're going to now do something really special. And they placed a call to the first Verizon 5G customer. He's in Houston. He's at his house. Like a floppy hair dude, two monitors. And the video call was so laggy that they kept talking over each other. I was like, I feel so bad for everyone. He's like, how's the speeds? And I was like, hello? No bees.

So that was our first like real big five-gee moment today. I'm excited to just keep calling it five-gee for the rest of time. Has anybody done a good 5G demo yet? Because all the demos that Sean Hollister saw in Hawaii turned out to be not good or not real. And now we have the CES keynote 5G demo with the very first real customer and there was lag. It's like, what do you blame that lag on? Do you blame that lag on the 5G connection or do you blame it on like CES? There was some guy backstage who like had like the patching wrong on the board backstage thing. We just super thought the customer is going to swear at Hans Vesper.

It's like the 10 second delay of like, I hate you, you're overcharging me. He's like muting him really fast. No, who knows what you can blame? That's like a super demo fail. But that was like the moment, right? Like the CEO of Verizon, which is all on 5G, he took over. He's like shutting down the media business. He's like, we're a network company.

This is what we do. It's a whole thing. Here's our first real 5G customer. Screw you, 18T, T, you're liars. and he was like, hello, Carl, and the guy was like, yes. Like, Dieter and I just sat there being like, oh, this is really bad. Yeah, it happened a lot. And the guy, he was like, how are the speeds?

And there was like, eight seconds of silence. And the guy's like, I've been getting pretty good speeds. And he's like, I'm going to run a speed test. And you're like hit it. And the speed test started running the background. And he can see it on one of those two monitors. Yeah. And he's like, I've been getting between 600 and like 1.2.

and like right then the big speed test number hit 1.7 like gigabits down. And like, wow, Verizon. Someone's at his house. It's like shoving bits into his computer. But then it started slowing down really fast. And it ended on like 620. And then Hans Vesberg was like, thank you.

It was a lot today. But a good five-gue keynote. It's the story of CS. I was on a panel this morning to talk to like, industry types of 5G. Dieter was on like 18 podcasts this afternoon talking about 5G. Yeah, I, here's the thing.

I'm going to put Nilai and Domi and Dan on the spot. You get one minute to think and we'll sit here in silence together. If you're in your car, pull over and pause, this is the time for a minute. You have 10 seconds to answer this. A very simple question. What is 5G? Okay, it's like three seconds we're stopping this.

The answer is no one knows and it's just in your heart. Okay. It's one more than before. Yeah. And that's like where CS is is a thing. Verizon and Timo want to tell you it's like a technological innovation. The cable companies want to talk to you about 10G. I don't even know.

It's not a thing. No, we're not going there. Can I go talk to cable companies tomorrow? Yes, please do. We got to end the Vergecast because I need to go to sleep because I'm talking to cable companies tomorrow. I will tell you that the story of CS that is happening under all the stuff we've talked about is everyone here. All the like marketing people, all the company executives, their money comes from talking about five. Yeah.

It's like flooding. And we are not talking about it except for these hilarious anecdotes because it's just not real yet. Yeah. And it's years away. And yet that's like the heartbeat of CES is like everyone's on a panel being like the 5G future. Yeah. It's the thing. What's your answer, by the way?

It is a shared delusion that technology makes things amazing. Deeter. Also, also microcells. I would like everyone to tweet at Deeter and tell them if he did a good job or a bad job on the bird chest today. I know my answer. I mean, I'm, you're fine. Wow.

I think you did it. I think you did fine. If you think I did a good job, just tweet the word negadotch. I hate you so much. At record. All right. We're done with today's Vergecast. Thank you, Dan.

Thank you, Domi. It was wonderful. We've got some more stuff from CES coming. Ashley and Caitlin are doing, why did you push that button live in front of an audience tomorrow morning? You're able to hear that on their feed. We're doing some stuff at the Google stage. We'll find a way for you to listen to you at some point.

It'll be a thing. You can listen to Function with the Neil Dash, which is also happening. Actually, taped today. That'll be out. You can listen to Pivot, K-Swish, Scott Gals. I'm telling you, you called her that. There's all kinds of stuff happening, all kinds of audio experiences for you to have. A child in a box will fold your socks for you.

Oh, man. It's going to be great. That's it. We've got more interviews from CS. We'll be back very soon. Thank you for listening. This is the Verchast. Rock and roll.

Paul. Say promo code. Paul? This episode of the Vergecast was sponsored by the new Microsoft Surface Pro 6. The Surface Pro 6 can help you get things done whether you're on the field or running a business, like Brian O'Rocco and Michael Griffin, for example, two former NFL teammates who up a cupcake shop in Texas. They use the Surface Pro 6 to do everything they need from setting schedules to creating

promotions for social media and designing new flavors. It's light, super fast, and has a great battery life. I'm not talking about the cupcakes. I'm talking about the Service Pro 6. Tackle your passions with the power and speed of the Microsoft Service Pro 6.