The Vergecast - Code Conference, Essential Phone, and Chromebook Pro

Episode Date: June 2, 2017

This week’s Vergecast is recorded out of the studio. Nilay heads to the West Coast to reunite with Dieter, Lauren, and Casey at this year’s Code Conference. The gang discusses the speakers (in more than one way) at the event including Andy Rubin, Hillary Clinton, and Reed Hastings. They also chat a little about the news outside of the conference. Back in New York, Paul reports on gadget week with his weekly segment “Let me hug your robot heart.” There’s a whole lot more in between, so listen to get it all! 01:29 - The case for editing tweets 06:01 - The Essential Phone: a first look at the hardware 30:11 - Paul’s weekly segment “Let me hug your robot heart” 32:49 - Netflix CEO says net neutrality is ‘not our primary battle’ 42:41 - Clinton says the Russians had to be ‘guided by Americans’ in how they weaponized information 55:37 - Don’t buy the Chromebook Pro until Google fixes a critical bug 59:11 - Verizon says the Droid brand isn’t dead, but it sure looks like it 1:01:30 - Microsoft's new Skype redesign is a radical change that looks like Snapchat 1:04:55 - Samsung's Bixby voice assistant is reportedly still weeks away from US launch 1:07:11 - Apple’s ‘Siri speaker’ reportedly enters manufacturing as announcement nears Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

And welcome to the Vergecast. You might detect a slight echo in the room. A frisson. The sound of money, if you go. The Vergecast is coming to you, recording. We're in an extraordinarily fancy ballroom at the Taranaeer Resort because we are at the Code Conference. So I'm here. I'm here.

I'm here. Deere Bono is here. Yeah, this room is making us very, like, chill and like... I'm going to order some people to be killed in this room. Casey Newton is here. It is so nice to be here with so much money around us. Lauren Good is here. It is so nice to be here with the sound of crashing waves outside of the door.

Yeah, let me just describe this room to you. We're in the top floor of the Taranaeer Resort, and we're literally gazing its two walls of windows. We're on like the corner boardroom, and it's just the ocean spreading out in front of us. But that's not what we're here to talk about. We're here to be talking about technology, culture, power. those who wield it, those who want it.

But certainly if you have questions about the boardroom, then you should get at us on Twitter. Yeah, yeah. Or the ocean. There's a sharp Aquas TV in the corner. It's a beautiful room. But if it sounds a little different, that's actually why I'm explaining this, Steve.

It sounds a little different or echoey. It's because we're on the road this week in this opulent room at this opulent conference. It's been a great code conference. Yeah. A lot of things happen. We should just get into the news. The biggest news of the week, I think.

For us, anyway. For us. personally, is it Casey asked the CFO of Twitter when the hell he's going to be able to edit tweets? Listen, Nilai, there's a movement in this country. There's not a movement. You can hear it on the streets. Listen, you know, after the election...

You can hear it in these tweets. After the election, everyone was like, where were all these Trump voters? We never heard from them. After they introduced editing tweets into Twitter, it's going to be the same thing. People are going to be like, we didn't realize we wanted this as much as we actually did. And... No one says that about Trump. And I think you can just look forward to some changes. But let me tell you what I did.

Okay. So as you may know, I have been on a years-long campaign to let us be able to edit tweets. I've made the case for editing tweets on Theverge.com where I've sort of laid out my case. I won't repeat it here. Also, it's self-evident why we should be able to edit any text that we write. But also, is that true? I had a real opportunity. I just imagine Casey if he were born in like, you know, 1600, just railing against ink on vellum and why somebody must invent the pencil.

We must be able to edit the words. Usually the words self-evident are, like preceded by we hold these truths and followed by all men are created equal not we should be able to edit all text that we're saying. If you saw the faves I get on my tweets about editing tweets,

you'd be telling a different story. But here's what I can tell you. Anthony Nodo, the CFO of Twitter, was the penultimate speaker at the code conference. And one of the cool things about the conference

is that the random straggler audience randos like me can just get up and ask questions. Yeah. And so I strolled to the microphone. I was the first question. You didn't stroll. He ran. He tripped over my feet in Deeters to get there.

You definitely sprinted. What might even say, like, you traipsed. You would just, you just went. I went for it. His hair got there like 17 seconds before the rest of him did. But the good news is I was able to say, you know, Anthony, there's this growing movement to let us be able to edit our tweets. You know, can I count you as a supporter?

And then he talked for three minutes about essentially that Twitter continually evolved. it's a product and it appreciates its passionate users and then he sort of stopped talking. That was a prepared text because he knew it was coming. You can't come to this space where they know that you are. Yeah. They monitor Twitter.com. You've been tweeting from here. They know your location. I got back channel afterwards that Nodo had been prepared for this exact question and then it would be coming from me. Because they know that you're here. Yeah. And so anyway, so he gave me a non-answer and then I said, thank you. I'm going to go ahead and mark you down as a supporter. And then he laughed and nothing more. So I think that tells us something

that within Twitter there's a growing acceptance of the inevitability of editable tweets. Yeah. The biggest news of the week. By far. And that was the Roachcast. Nothing else happening. I don't think notice said anything else really important. He said a bunch of stuff about live TV

and how he wants to fill this place. He made the claim that the reason Twitter is getting into video is because it increases like viewership and engagement with tweets. That people tweet more and read more tweets when they're watching video and so they just put it right there on the platform. But at the same time, he also made like another claim that like the, you know, even a

huge increase in like that is like doesn't affect their like overall numbers on the bottom line. So like, I don't know, they've got this whole story that they're telling now that for the first however any years of Twitter's existence, we didn't know what it was and we decided we know what it is now. We figured it out last year. We know what Twitter is. An uneditable text publishing platform. The four-point description of what Twitter is for. And anytime anybody wants us to do anything, we decide whether or not it will help one of those four things and then we say yes or no. What's better than Dick Costello's like inception style bubbles upon bubbles chart? What was that?

It was crazy. Oh, like the four quadrants of doom. Yeah. Yeah. It was a bad moment in Twitter history. I do think that they are closer to arriving at what they wanted to be. I think the question will just be, is there actually a good business here? Look, there's a whole conversation we could have about the number of people who stood on stage here at Code and talked about video and phones.

But that conversation is boring because it's just like it's interesting a little bit. But like it was definitely an underlying current, right? Like the shift in media, but whatever. Yeah, video in general. I want to talk. Video is a thing, guys. Video is a whole thing. You've heard it here.

And that's why you're listening to this internet radio. But the biggest news here. for us. Yeah. Was the essential phone. The essential phone. And I got to tell you, Dieter Bo. Just call it phone.

I was going to call it the e-phone. Is that not kosher? Its actual name is his PH-1. Really? Yeah. I thought that he said on stage it's just called the phone. Yeah, but it's like model number.

But like pH-1. Spell out one. Phone. Well, now I just want to jump off this balcony to the beautiful ocean. But I want to hear the story. So Andy Rubin's on stage the other night and he reveals this phone to Walt Mossberg who was interviewing him.

But then afterwards, Dieter Bone, executive editor of The Verge, who's sitting right across from me. Chase is, tell us how you got your hands on this phone because we think you're the only person in the industry who's had in the press industry. Walt's. Walt is actually played with the phone. Yeah. But Walt's retiring, so he's out.

So you're the only one left. Just old school gadget hustle. Like if you look at the pictures, they're real bad because I'm not a good photographer. photographer. They're like in literally a hotel hallway. It was like, you know, talking to the people at Ruben's company and like, where you at? We should hang out. Following him around a hotel room. Having like he's literally like trying to pack his bags to leave to fly away from this place. And I'm like, no, no, let me take some pictures. Like, okay. And then like, okay, I got to find some place to take good pictures. Well, I can't. So here it is in my hand. There's some hotel carpet behind it.

Click, click, click, click, click. Which is the thing we used to do all the time. Yeah. Like literally all the time. I am Mr. Blurry Cam. I thought the photos were wonderfully evocative of a time and a place. I instinctively texted Joanna Stern to tell her to fix her white balance. Because that happened to these. Wait, wait. Deeter took the photos and you texted Joanna?

Whenever they were bad white balance photos and unagged it, it was always Joanna. That feels like a weird form of referral anger. Like, Dieter, you did the photos. Joanna, you did the photos. Joanna. I would just see photos with like off white balance and it would always be Joanna. And I'd be like, fix it right now. So I saw that.

Anyway. It was just a referral burn. That's all that was. So yeah. I don't know. It's his phone. Yeah. Like, go through it.

Okay. So the thing that everybody sees on the phone right away is that the screen is bezelless, except for the bottom there's a strip. And then the top, it literally wraps around the front facing cam. So it looks like a little one-eyed minion basically. When you hold it and look at it, like your eye. just go straight to that dead zone on the screen. Just like, ah, nah, constantly. But then after like literally a minute,

you do stop doing that, and it doesn't feel weird to have a weird gap in the middle of the top of the screen. And I do think it's smart. Like, when you look at an Android phone, there's never anything there. It's always like notifications on the left, status crap on the right,

and there's like an empty space there. So sure, yeah, that makes sense. So that's fine. It doesn't wrap around the edges. you know, it's whatever. The titanium, I don't know, like it feels like metal. But then there's all those ceramic in it? Yeah.

Where's that ceramic? The back is ceramic. And there's a one plus ceramic phone. That's ceramic. Ceramic is really good at like resisting scratches. It's really hard. It just feels like glossy glass. And you don't need antenna lines.

And you don't need antenna lines. Although there are antenna lines on the titanium. There's like a couple of lines on the edge. Oh, interesting. I thought he said that you didn't need any type of band-aid. Well, I mean, this was literally like it was a, what's called DVT unit. Oh, okay. So like one of the photos I like blurt out like the code number.

Like there were numbers all along this thing. Every piece of the phone had some code on it to like tell you, identify it for you or whatever. I will just say. Like we should get into like the why the phone is interesting or not interesting. But just having held the hardware, it feels like imagine if you took an iPhone and put like a perfect square case on it. Yeah. Like it,

the edges aren't like sharp, but the thing just feels kind of like blocky. And people may hate it, I don't know. It's not like super thin. And that's not because it was a prototype that this is what it's all, everyone's fault is going to look like this. It has an aesthetic of like,

I am kind of blocky. Yeah. I am not trying to be curved and rounded and smooth and whatever. It's just like, nope, I am a, I am a rectangle. And I am perfectly happy being a rectangle. Yeah.

the essential shape of a phone Yeah There it is But essentially what was I'm just kidding I'm gonna say that as many times as I possibly can in the segment What was the UI like based in your experience?

It's Android, it's just Android So you swipe through Everything looks like Android There was no skin there was nothing Nothing I mean there's also nothing on it It was like like the thing booted And like had Android

I didn't I only had a couple of minutes to be like here it is it's Android but I like couldn't like hunt for software I couldn't like you know Attach any Pogo So were craplets I was I saw the Pogo pin 360 camera.

Yeah. And I said, let me do that. It's like, we're leaving now. Okay. Okay, so let's talk about it. So that's like the phone. There's the hardware. Literally, we think it's Dieter and Walt who have held it.

Who aren't, who don't work at a central. And, you know, presumably like random carrier people. Right. Like some mid-level marketing manager at Sprint is listening to this being like, I've held it. I know. Well, we asked all the carriers, are you going to support the phone? And Verizon's like, it'll work, whatever. and T-Mobile is like, everything works with T-Mobile.

We're the best. Yeah. And AT&T was like, T-Mobile did another shot of tequila, continued screaming into the night. AT&T asked us why we thought that we were allowed to talk to them at all because they're AT&T. I don't know.

It'll work there. And Sprint was like, yeah, it'll totally work on our network and we'll have more to say later. Yeah. Which I just want to point out that it has become obvious to me that I have a soft spot for phones that are, probably going to fail. Right?

Also maybe Chromebooks. Yeah, also Chromebooks. And if you want like the definitive like example of a phone that is very cool and interesting and exciting and innovative and like just everything seems great, it would, I'm going to say it would be the WebOS, you know, Palm Prix. And it launched on Sprint. Yeah.

And there's a little bit of deja vu in my head right now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. was like, who is going to buy this thing? Wait, we need to just go through all of this stuff.

There's like, I wanted to start with Dieter holding it because that's like exclusive. In theory, the phone should be the least interesting thing that Andy Rubin is trying to do with this company. Right. So he's got the phone. And that's $700. And it's $700. And it's $700. And it comes in colors. All the colors of the colors of the rainbow. Four colors for the rainbow. One of which is Matt. The rest are claws. The favorite color of the rainbow. Matt. Also, like, bronze. I don't think. bronze. Like a dude.

This is my friend Matt, who's now available as a color. I'm going to put Matt as like the color of my eyes on my driver's license. My color, Matt. Look, it's been a really long three days. I remember last time we did this was like at night. Last year. It was like completely after. If you're like, you know how every phone, every company when they like release the colors of their gadget, the colors all have ridiculous names?

Yeah. And like Google made their jokes with like, this one's really blue or whatever. but they're always like ice this, you know, I don't know, charcoal that, whatever. Space gray. What if they just gave the color's names? This is Matt. He's white. Jenny.

Anyway, so there's the phone. Jennings are cool. Dieter's really enjoying this. We have to stop. Well, the names of colors are inherently arbitrary. Right. Like blue could just be George. It doesn't matter.

Anyway, what is truth? The Vergecast, everybody. So there's the phone. Yeah. Then there is, and it's, the phone is, like you said, among the least interesting. Then there's a home device called the Essential Home. Yep. Which is a round puck with a huge round display, which we think might be the biggest round display available in consumer electronics.

Correct. that runs ambient OS Yeah Which Andy and Walt clearly had some sort of like mind meld Because Walt's last column was about ambient technology And then Andy Rubin came here and released Ambient OS Yeah So he was very happy to latch onto that

Ambient OS Sound, I'm just going to say this Sounds very promising It also sounds like the ravings of a fucking madden Like Like the way it's described Are you going to make me read their description? Yeah,

The way it's described in the website, it's like, it's an API to your home. It turns your home into an application. Your home is an API and you are an application. You are but one feature of the API that is the application of the universe. Like, it's just everything. And this is exactly how normal people talk to each other in middle America. When they walk into Home Depot or Best Buy, they're like, what's going to make me feel like an API today? Give it to me immediately. Well, here's a bad sign. Essential.com is not loading. That's great. But, but, The point of the essential home device in the Ambien OS is near as we can tell, because there's no demos. There's just one screenshot of the device running Ambien OS.

And all that screenshot is, it's a huge modal dialogue box that says leave now. Because it's like a proactive reminder for you to like go to the airport. We have a picture of a music interface. There's a picture of a music interface. It's got like a volume thing around a circle in the middle for some reason. But AmbienOS, it's fundamentally supposed to, and I don't know how they're going to do this, tie into every other smart home device that you own. Yep. And then somehow tie into all of the other smart platforms that exist, like HomeKit and smart things and Alexa.

And that mechanism is completely unclear. Yeah. Well, on stage, when Walt was interviewing him, he basically said, like, there's, too many UIs. There's too many standards, so I'm making another one. Yeah. But he,

he wants to be the person who, like, abstracts all of the crap that you have to deal with at a smart home and, like, make the layer that just has them all talk to each other. You know, it's like, it's like synergy in WebOS. Yeah.

It's going to fit. Back to the WebOS conspiracy. It's also, wasn't there an emphasis on privacy as well? Yeah. And the, what exactly he means by being more private is super unclear. It's really,

really unclear. Like, there was something, I don't know if we wrote this, to be honest, or this is in the language somewhere on the site. I'm not remembering at the moment, but something about keeping more of the data on device rather than in the cloud, but I don't see how that's, I just don't see how that's possible. And I also don't see how it's total, it's going to be possible to get it all the other companies, the ambient OS. Right. So the, the third piece of this or fourth piece of this. So we've got the phone, we've got ambient OS. We've got the, what do we call this thing? Does a smart

speaker? Is it a, a, it's like a Huck? A smart speaker. But it's got a display. We need a new word for these things that have displays because there's smart circles well there's the amazon one that's a square intelligent ellipses i think we should just i'll call them matt jenny jennie jennie jane's jane just get in there thinking like speaking of like things that like prove that this is actually going to work is he's trying to create an ecosystem of modules that will attach to the phone and possibly the speaker or like your wall right and the The lynchpin of this is he did two things, both which are very pragmatic.

The first thing that he did is for wireless communication, he's using basically wireless USB. So everybody knows how to code to USB to communicate. So that's simple. So that's better than like what Google was doing with like their early versions of Project Aura, like these like insane magical future whatever's for wireless, you know, data. And then the second thing he's doing is like they don't,

You don't have to stick a battery in every single one of these things because that sucks. You have to charge it. So he's using pogo pins and then magnets to like hold them on. So yeah, there's like we're entering a world of pogo pins. Yeah. They're little, if you don't know a pogo pin in, they're just little spring loaded guys. Yeah, just little dudes. There's two on the back.

There's two receptacles in the back and the pins are on the thing and they clip in. Yep. And they give power to the device. And he went on this whole speech about how I don't need to put a Wi-Fi chip in here. I don't have any pattern here. So my 360 camera only costs 50 bucks. and it worked. It worked pretty well.

He's also being very careful not to call it mods or wasn't really saying modular. It was more, they call that part of the phone the accessory bus, the wireless accessory bus. And was it you that asked actually, Dieter, about modular? Someone got up and asked him, it was he about modularity and how it hasn't really taken off. And Rubin did say that he plans to make the first five or six, they plan to make the first five or six accessories to get people started on it. I think I can't think of more than two mods. I can think of like camera and speaker. And an extra battery is usually, yeah.

But otherwise, I mean, once you start getting into like, and this can also be a projector and your friends will come over and you'll project from your phone. Here's a hook to mix your dough. You guys. Pasta maker. Cost extruder. I know. The only consumer product that built a successful ecosystem of external modules that you clicked on to the thing.

And you're just going to freaking hate me to for saying this. but it was the handspring visor. That's because one of the mods was a cellular radio. Yes, all of the, all of the mods. It's the one that turned it into a phone. And that's literally what the first trio was, was a handspring visor with a mod you couldn't take off. But all of the mods on the visor were cell phone,

MP3 player, storage, they were apps, modem, right? They were things that just became apps on a phone. I don't know, there's a bunch of stuff that's like coming for like mod. But like that's like, you know, physical key. So, actually, I put this on a rundown. It's funny because he announced the essential phone.

He announced a modular phone with this thing. And he announced his Ambien OS, which the phone is real. Like, it's a thing Dieter held it. It runs Android. We know what Android phones are. An Android phone with a funky screen design and a modular accessory ecosystem is not, like, he'll ship the phone. Yeah.

He said it was 30 days, which is, I don't. Everyone at code was going to get a free one. Like, he's that confident. Yep. Then there's this Ambien OS thing, which seems like insane vapor to me. That's just me. Then there's like an assistant that he's doing. Yeah, there's an assistant out of nowhere.

Yeah. And so the reason that he's making the phone is because he wants to put his assistant in people's pockets, basically. And that was fundamentally his reason to make the phone. But at the same time, today we reviewed the motto, what is it, Z2 play? Z-2 play. That's a terrible name. It's just awful.

But that's a phone with a modular accessory ecosystem that people quite like. Dan really liked the first one. And then Samsung today announced a new Smart Things Hub that is actually a mesh Wi-Fi router, which is the combination of things that everybody has always wanted. Yeah. And Smart Things purports to interface with everything in your home and be the bridge on top of all of it. What is new? What is he bringing to the table here that Motorola and Samsung are,

on like generation two and three of these products already. Well, and like, and one of the things I've been wondering is, why announce all these things at the same time, right? Like, if you were just excited about the phone, why not announce the phone? Because I think when you unveil all of these things simultaneously, it just sort of raises the question of how baked is all the stuff. Like, it just seems incredibly ambitious for a relatively small company that hasn't been working on it for all that long.

See, I actually disagree with that a little bit. Because I think the way that Rubin presented it was he went through like a little bit of progression of computing over the past few decades and then ended up, you know, as he was talking to the crowded code conference the other night, ended up at, okay, so what's post-mobile? And I think if he had just showed up with a mobile phone at that point, it would have been sort of like, okay, so what's post-mobile is another mobile phone and it's on Android. Got it. Yeah, but then also why make the phone the centerpiece of your announcement, you know, like

because it's the thing that's done? But why not wait? Like, what's the point of shipping this phone? Why not ship the other device? So anyway, I think the reason that he introduced five things at once was that even if any individual, one of them, didn't have any real innovation. You sort of present them all together and it kind of seems like this complete thought. But as you know, Neely, it just seems like a lot of stuff other people have done. Right. But what he's saying, actually, Josh Spalski is like, why are you doing this? And he's like, we want to be a big consumer electronics company that puts the user first. That's kind of where the privacy thing comes from. And he was like, we've raised multiple hundreds of millions of dollars. And then while he was saying that, he was making a three with his hand. Oh, really? He was holding up three fingers.

And like, he's like multiple and like winking. Well, I think he had explicitly said at one point that his fund, the playground global fund had raised $300 million. Yeah. No. But his fund is an investor in Essential. I don't, it's, oh, okay. There's a whole thing where like, he was, he just said essential had multiple hundreds

of millions of dollars. He was like waving his hand around. He knows what signal he was. Maybe he was just trying to get his people to like get him off to state. He's like, if I flash three. Anyway, but he was like they've raised obviously a lot of money And they want to be a big player And they think they're gonna ramp over time

And so sure, and now it's all the things I just the vibe afterwards Just from talking to the code attendees Was what was the point of this? People were very down on it in a way that I That actually thought was surprising Which is interesting It's like weird because the attention on our site

The traffic to these posts on our site Was like skyrocketing. Yeah. Well, the man was the most popular post of the month. And people love Android, right? And so the idea that the founder of Android has a big new idea, like, there are very few verge stories that are going to be more interesting to our audience, right?

But I think we're just still kind of still waiting. He also had some choice words to say about Android. Right. Which is that the phones are all bad. Yeah. Which was an amazing thing to hear the co-founder of Android say. Right. And say basically in those words.

Yeah, he's like, I don't like any of them. I have them all and I don't like any of them. And then he was like, technology is like too complicated and it's my fault because I made Android. Yeah, it's going to make a great iPhone commercial this fall. Just a clip of Andy Rubin talking about what he had leaped on the world. And then just the Apple logo. Well, I think he was trying to indict iOS in that as well, right?

He's like, there's not a lot of choice in the market. There's not a lot of innovation. And when there is, it's too complicated. And he talked about overload, too. Like, fatigue is the word he used, actually. Just there being too many devices in general. Yeah, but he thinks that, like, there were unintended, knock-on consequences to the mobile revolution that he helped start by creating Android.

Sure. What has he actually presented in this phone, I would say very little, or in his overall vision that solves that problem? I mean, it sounds like what he wants is to build an AI that talks to everything for you. Yeah. It's just a very tall order. And he, like, Apple is not going to give him HomeKit and Siri access. Yeah.

They're just not. That's not how they operate. It sounds, Amazon will give Alexa access to virtually anyone. And he brought up that the Alexa team had already been talking to him and they're very supportive of him.

So like maybe that will happen. Yeah. Pretty good shot. He'll get the Google assistant. Yeah, he knows a guy. Yeah. Over there. Like, that'll be fine.

But like, it's just a lot of the same. Yeah, you know, I think like the more interesting, an interesting comparison to make here is Tony Fidel, who also wanted to start a big consumer brand. And what did he do? Did he come in and be like, well, I helped invent the iPhone. And so here's my next phone.

You know, he's like, I'm going to reinvent the thermostat. And then all of us were like, huh. And then we looked at it and we realized that thermostats are terrible. He winds up inventing this whole new category. Nest is a big success. Is it? What? Well, until Google bought it.

I'm just saying, like sort of within the first two years, right? Everybody was pretty excited about Nest. If Rubin had gone out and sort of found some other gadget that either needed to be reinvented or hadn't been invented yet and showed up with that, even if it seemed like it was in a niche category, I think we'd all be sitting around the table saying, you know, this might not seem like the most exciting thing, but if it takes off,

it's going to give him the runway he needs to sort of develop this full suite of consumer products. I think that's a more tried and tested approach to building a consumer brand. Then I'm going to reinvent five categories simultaneously in ways that don't actually look like reinventions. Yeah. What if he had come out and presented a TV?

I keep thinking about what Reed Hastings said about, like someone asked if he was going to ever make a Netflix or ever, excuse me, ever launch a Netflix line of movie theater chains. And he said, no, I would, you know, and that's the TVs are getting so good, right? Which is sort of in conflict of what he said earlier about how people will still go to the movie theaters for whatever reason. But, uh, but like, imagine if Andy, anyway, imagine if Andy Rubin, it just like got on stage and I was like, here's the essential TV. I'm kind of into that. Like, everybody will tell you you can't make money in, money TVs, but like, I would be, I would be really interested to see Andy Rubin's

take on a TV just because there's so little innovation in that category. I have watched so many TV devices get launched on stage at code that have all died. You don't do that. If you're listening to this and you're like, oh, that sounds like a good idea. Just stop. Just stop listening.

I want you to keep listening to the Vodcast. We appreciate your support, but I'm saying if that sound like a good idea, turn this show off, take a fucking break, take a cold shower, come back to us. We'll be waiting. It's on demand. Savage.

All right. We've got to read an ad. We got other stuff to talk about. But we're presumably getting the phone soon. presumably because they're supposed to ship them in 30 days. We're presumably going to see much more of this ambient OS. The branding is great, right? We had a story stream on the site that was like all of the essential phone news.

And I was like, well, at least they got that. And it's interesting. Andy was not like a super charismatic presenter of this stuff. But just the interest from our audience, it was like a delightful break from like Trump news on Twitter for like a little. bit. All anyone was talking about was a new cell phone. And it was because Dieter took medium to bad photos in the hotel hallway. And I was like, this is 2010. Like, I'm back. Yeah. Anyway, let me read this ad. It is unsurprisingly for Squarespace. Who are great. This episode of Virtchast is

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Look around. On the web with templates. Hello, this is Paul Miller coming at you live with Gadget Hot Takes. There is so much going on in the gadget world, and, you know, I'm happy for everybody who got to listen to very smart, intelligent executives talk about the future, but the present is gadgets. And there's so much happening. CompuTech was this week. There's all these crazy laptops and video. cards and motherboards, all the new motherboards that support the new Intel processors are out,

the X299 motherboards. It's so exciting. You have to go to the verge.com slash circuit brick. I don't normally tell you to do this, but it's really important this week because it's a gadget week. Let me tell you. But every week I do a segment. And it's called Let Me Hug Your Robot Heart. and this week on Let Me Hug Your Robot Heart is, I don't know, it's maybe the pinnacle of Indiegogo. You know, it's that classic, couldn't cut it on Kickstarter, had to put it on Indiegogo so we get the money no matter what because we're kind of scummy. But maybe we're just really passionate about this and we wanted to succeed. I don't even know. I really don't know.

This company called Calium Collium Labs. It's with a K. They made the Sound Heroes Bluetooth speech. Which is a Bluetooth speaker that is a statue of a robot that looks like it's from out of a video game. They're basically trying to make their own, like, imagine they tried to license like the Silver Surfer or Thor or something, you know, like a real IP and put Bluetooth speakers in the chest and then have them stand on a plate that is. a subwoofer, and by the way, this figurine is like three feet high, but they couldn't get the IP, so they're like making their own IP. They've got like a video game tie-in. They're like making a comic book about this robot. Yeah, sound heroes, but there's only one hero, and it's this

large polygonal robot-like thing that doesn't do anything except to have like laser eyes. There's a big and a small version. The big version is like 280 bucks. It's probably the best way to spend your money on Indiegogo right now. It's funded, of course. It's very exciting. And, yeah, let me hug your robot heart segment I do every week without fail. Have good time. And on the West Coast, touch the ocean.

So you were talking about Netflix. Reed Hastings was here. He said some interesting stuff about that. There's actually a bunch of policy news, right? Hillary Clinton was here at Code. We should talk about that. She talked a lot about how content had been weaponized by the internet, which is interesting. And then Lauren Paul Jobs is here with Senator Kamala Harris.

Talk about education. But let's start with Reed. Lauren, do you want to go through what he, he talked about movie theaters. He talked about, he did. He talked about windowing, which, you know, is something that Netflix has talked about a bunch before. Netflix essentially believes that movies should be available on Netflix for streaming the same day that they are released in theaters and has advocated for that.

A lot of you probably know this, but if not, there's a, you know, there's a kind of a dark zone in the movie industry where there's a window of generally 90 days. It's getting a little bit shorter in some cases, but 90 days where between the time that a movie is released in theaters and that it becomes available for first DVD and then home rental. And so Netflix deals with that, right? And even though Netflix has all this great original content that they're making and stuff like that, they still, of course, would like faster access to movies. But it's hard to crack sort of the traditional distribution standards. So he spoke a lot about that. He said this interesting thing where he believes, I'm not sure he actually believes,

leaves this. I think maybe he was being diplomatic, but he believes that if the window is shortened and Netflix gets movies right away, that people will still go to theaters because he likened it to, well, I mean, people know how to cook. I'm paraphrasing a little bit. People know how to cook, but they still like go out to dinner with friends because it's like this communal experience, which I mean, personally, if I had access to a brand new movie, like John Wick 3, the moment that I came out on Netflix, I'm pretty positive. I would never go to a movie theater. And especially for people with kids who for them like going to the movie theaters involves like either getting a sitter or buying four or five tickets and like it becomes this very sort of complicated and expensive proposition

it's hard to like imagine but also when you go to a restaurant someone else makes the fucking food for you right like the comparison is not really apt because it's right the convenience actually is going out to dinner with friends as opposed to like doing the dishes at home but so we talked about that and then he did get into net neutrality which was sort of what we were waiting for and then Dieter you wrote about that specifically how he's, he's kind of deprioritizing. He's explicitly deprioritizing. He's basically like, look, when we were small and scrappy,

it was an existential problem for us. And so we were big warriors to save net neutrality. Now that we're big and powerful and we can get all the deals we want, it's not my problem. Somebody else carry that water. Yeah. I think he literally used the phrase, carry the water.

He said, carry the water. He said, we're big enough so that we can get the deals that we want. Yeah. We wrote a piece ages ago, Jake wrote it for us, where they he just charted Netflix public statements against on net neutrality against its subscriber account. Yeah. And it's just like they just got cooler. And by the end, they're like really big.

And they're like, yeah, great, whatever you idiots want to do. It's fine by us. We're Netflix. To me, that's the whole argument of why you want net neutrality. Because Netflix is basically saying we can do whatever we want. Because we're big. Because we're big. Little guys, you're on your own.

The last. The crackle team is like, well, we still need it. Yeah. We're crackle. So the last interview at Code here was Steve Case. By the way, crackleburn will always get Casey. I love a good crackleburn. Although Netflix's argument for doing some of the zero, what is it called, the zero rating schemes,

is that those opportunities are available to everyone, the small video producers and the crackers of the world and stuff like that because they have dappled in that a little bit. But Deeter continue, you're about to say something. No, I was just like one of the vibes at this whole conference is, is like everybody knows that we are not going to get reasonable, like, debates about regulation in our current political climate. Yeah. There's just going to be all regulation is evil.

And if you ask for regulation, you're a communist. And then everybody else is going, ah, no, please regulate. No, you're evil. Ah, no. I mean, you must regulate or else. And, like, it gets polarized really badly. But Steve Case, who founded AOL, is doing this thing where he is trying to get, like money and entrepreneurs out of Silicon Valley and like out into the, you know,

middle America into the rest of the country. And that's very admirable. But he said this thing where he was like, look, the government isn't going to go away. We should have some kind of like reasonable solution and we're not anywhere near it. And in the meantime, like, if you want to start a little company out in the middle of the country, you don't know what's going to happen. I mean, He didn't explicitly say that, but like Netflix piecing out of fighting for net neutrality, all the other big companies, Google, Apple, Microsoft, they're not piecing out, but they're, like, everybody basically knows that Title II is going to go away and nobody knows if anything's going to replace it, and everybody's just sort of assuming that, like, it's gone.

Guy from Time Warner. Jeff Buchus basically said that. What's her name from CBS? Sherry Redstone. Yeah, I listen to every single session. They all basically said the same thing, which is like, yeah, no, we're just going to, like, we're not going to have any of this stuff. But these are masters of the universe. Yeah, I don't want to underplay.

Like, the code lineup is not mid-level people. These, like, Cher Redstone is the primary shareholder of Vicarcom and CBS, right? Like, she runs them. Yeah. Jeff Pucas is the CEO of Time Warner. He's selling his company at AT&T. Yeah. Because he's like, the timing is right for me to just like, he sold everything.

Yeah. He took over Time Warner and he literally sold. every part of it. He sold time when I gave a little. He's like, well, I got one thing left. Yeah, but like they weren't even strenuously arguing, oh, no, get rid of these regulations are bad for us and we'll be, we're going to be good when they go away. We really need them to go away to save us and don't worry when they're gone. We're going to be, we're going to like do the right thing. They're basically saying, yeah, they're gone. They're going to be gone. They're going to be gone and it'll be fine. There's a lot of shrugging. There's a lot of shrugging and a lot of like,

who make the decisions that they either have nefarious plans or they're like, you know, like everybody is so like losing their minds over like how fast technology is changing and what Trump is doing that like the idea that anybody's gonna like be able to pay enough attention

to do anything nefarious in the next six months when regulations go away. Well I think there's also a sense that if you are one of these masters of universe like part of your responsibility is to just be calm. Yeah. Right? And like you there was,

I got a lot of that sense. like look there's not even incentives for us through the bad thing you know full disclosure Comcast NBC Universal big investor in box media they're a big sponsor of code a bunch of their people are here they left a bag full of minion I ate the skittles that Comcast left in my room fine game or gate come at me and a fast and furious toy car yeah I ate that too it was delicious uh whatever But they're here and I was just talking to some of them. I won't name names or whatever.

But the foundation of that conversation was, look, we're not doing it now. We don't want to do it in the future. It doesn't make sense. And we're happy to like go to Congress and pass a law that says the things that you want. That says no blocking, no throttling, no whatever. The mobile guys have a little bit of a different. I was talking to somebody who runs a small wireless access company. and he's like, it doesn't even, it's not even in anyone's best interest to do this.

Like, we want you to use more data. That's how we all make our money. That's the game we're playing and the wireless carriers in particular. The big danger is actually not the net neutrality stuff. It's the caps and the cap system that they're imposing because they know as cord cutting goes down and people stream more and more 4K, they can predict to some reasonable level of accuracy exactly when you're going to start maximizing your cap in your house and they're going to move you on to another more expensive payment structure.

And he's like, pay attention to that. It was, that was like a wild conversation. I mean, that sounds totally true to me. Yeah, but it was one of those, like, they're hiding the ball, like 12-dimensional chess conversations. Yeah. But, like, there's that sense of just calm. Like, it's going to, you're going to hate it and it's going to be bad, but we promise

we're not going to do this stuff. Well, it's, to me, like, you're right. It's a sense of calm, but it's also just a sense of inevitability. Like, we have been at the verge, like, sort of like, I don't know, psyching or up for like all right time to call the FCC and fight this thing and see if we can stop this from happening and like literally nobody here is like they're already they've already assumed that fight is over and they're like moving on to the next thing and the next thing for them is like shrug but like nobody was trying to convince anybody uh to like have a debate about whether or not

the FCC should change the rules around net neutrality they're assuming they're going to you know it's interesting and this is really wonky and we don't have to like spend a lot time on it. But Ajit Pai legally has to not have his mind made up right now. Right. Right. Right. He's got to ask for comment on his proposals, accept the comments, deliberate, and then like pass a thing. And like, ideally the FCC passed like unanimous thing. But it everyone here is like, well, they're going to do it. Yeah. So like it's the legal challenge that is coming in part will be a lot of evidence that the industry believes that they're right. regulator is already has his mind made up and this process is a sham. So that's a weird opening

that he's left open. A weird opening that he's left open. It's very, it's very, it's very, it's early in the day here, but it's been a long few days. I want to segue with that actually in a Clinton because it's obviously the verge. We're not. She talked about a lot of things. Yeah. But this sense of where the masters of the universe, we have to remain calm, was bookended by Hillary Clinton on stage here. And whatever you think of. Trump, just their styles are radically different. And Hillary's style is like complete mastery of the issues. Like she just knows the information inside and out.

She speaks very carefully and very forcefully. And then Trump is like, cofeefei. She comes across is very competent. Yeah. Yeah. Then like I talked to a bunch of people here and they're like, we don't like her, but she seems so smart. And there's like that yearning for someone who you can have like a very principled

intellectual argument with. But she talked about some things here that I think are like major verge stories actually. One, she said the Russians had to be guided by Americans and how they quote unquote weaponized information. Yeah. So when she was like she has this whole like explanation of what her take is on the email leaks. Yeah. And like there's a whole like chain of logic. Yeah.

Yeah. She's basically got a timeline. I'm sorry. I'm like, I'm really. quite tired. You want some diet care? I know it's funny. I'm pretty sure if you went back and listened to last year's Vergecast episode the night we did

the Code Conference one, I was like not making any sense then either. But she did, she went through, for example, she said within an hour after the access, Hollywood tapes were leaked. That's when the Podesta emails were dropped. And so she points out a couple of, you know, hard-drawn samples. She sounded like a prosecutor laying out her theory of the case. Yeah. And like her core contention is sort of the thing that,

was new is her saying, look, the Russians, there's no way that they could be like smart enough on their own and be plugged in enough on their own to know when it would be most effective to dump some of these leaks that they dump. It's like one little more tech and culture turn past it, right? She's like, she said some crazy things with the Democratic National Committee being bankrupt. But she was like, we built this operation for Obama. that was all about voter turnout. I need to get into that, but I want to one last thing on the Russia thing.

She pointed out that there was nothing really interesting in the emails. Yeah. And she called them, Lauren. She called them Anodyne and what was it? A nothing burger. Oh, yeah, she called it a nothing burger. That was one of the first things she said when she came out on stage and it was, they got right into it. And she said, really, you know, the emails were.

The biggest nothing burger of all time. There was the biggest nothing burger of all time, and ultimately it was what made her, you know, start to, what made her, start to lose ground in the end after one of, there was another release at the end of October. Yeah, yeah. And, yeah, but I just loved that she used that word.

Lauren lost her mind. It was great. It's Lauren's word. Anyway, sorry. Anyway, but she had this whole theory that was, you know, the email, she called it, the press covered like Pearl Harbor. But it was more interesting to me was she talked about,

the Democrats had this whole date operation. She basically threw it on the bus. It was like, it was garbage. and invested in it, and I had to fund it myself, and I wrote the PHP by hand. They were using a Packard Bell. Yeah, it was like real big of a sex computer.

What was going on? I got in there and fixed it. Everything that Obama did on the internet was garbage. But then she's like, in contrast, the Republican Party, because they have a lot of billionaires who own media companies, their operation was also like

right-wing content farms. Yeah. And like spamming fake news out in the world. And like, like Sinclair buying local news operations and like managing content as well as like voter registration data, which is what the Democrats are really up to. Yeah. So like her basic like narrative is like, we came in and used technology to like get out the vote and like, you know, send our message and like get flyers and blah, blah, blah, blah. And like not defensive, but like essentially like get out the vote. And the Republican machine used it like explicitly for like attack in a way that.

nobody on the Democratic side had thought to do. Right. Targeted false news. Yeah. Or just like, I mean, I, yeah. Yeah. It's a whole range of things, right? But there's like this media operation, which is fundamentally interesting to me because

it's a media operation enabled by the internet and hilariously enabled to an enormous degree by open platforms and net neutrality. Right? Because if you're a Comcast, you could just throttle the fake news and make it go away. but they can't because of the rules. So like it all comes around full circle. Like we build the world's biggest open information system. We can't assume like it won't be used in this way.

So her whole thing was this machine existed. And then these Russian hacks happened. And the machine was ready and waiting to quote unquote weaponize information. I thought that was just as a theory of the case, like I'm pretty sure she was just like reading the first few chapters of her book on stage. Like she was prepped. I talked to some people who had dinner with her earlier and they're like this was basically the same

thing she said at dinner. So like she's obviously like this is an argument that she's going to be making repeatedly. And you know there's I'm sure deep into politics there's all kinds of podcasts that will answer the question or endlessly desk act whether she should have

apologized more like whatever. But her thing was this is an unprecedented combination of like foreign hacking into our country and then how the media structure of our country has developed. Technological forces and social. Yeah.

And those things, to me, are just like ultimately fascinating. Because you could make the argument right now in this country that we should get rid of net neutrality and all of our internet providers should do a better job of like locking down the flow of information. She actually, I don't think that's a good argument. She explicitly asked Facebook and Twitter to do that. Yep. Yeah.

That was her thing. She's like, they need to figure out how to moderate these platforms. Which seems super unlikely. But it does, I mean, not that they can't do it any better, but that they can, get a handle on this right now. I mean, they're, it's a very difficult problem. I mean, the thing that I just thought about sitting there listening to or describe what you just described, Neely, was like, how does any of this get better? Yeah. Like, it, it seems just so tricky. And, you know, while I'm sure there will be, um, you know, new, uh, defenses that, uh,

candidates put up in the next elections, uh, the Russians have learned a ton from this election. And, and so it really is going to be this kind of new, uh, information arms race. And it's terrifying to be. Yeah. That's why we should get rid of net neutrality. I mean, like, I don't believe that. But it's, it's part of the argument, right? Like, if you really want whatever company to be more accountable for the information that it delivers, you could make them do that. Yeah. And that is terrifying. But it's, it's kind of like, should she have spent more, that was my question. Should she have spent more time in Wisconsin? Like, probably yes, too, right? Like, acknowledge this other thing. But I thought it was really interesting.

And to me, it's part of the story of this election that will just continue growing and growing and growing. Because she is obviously going to be making that case really loudly for a long time. But part of the answer to why wasn't she in Wisconsin is also like enmeshed in technology. Like their data told them don't need to do it. And their data was wrong. And they also like she also had a whole, you know, a bunch of all this stuff. but like fundamentally, like looking at the intersection of tech and politics, the sort of like advantages and disadvantages that Republicans and Democrats have right now are fascinating.

So Republicans, there's a book called Rat Fucked that's about gerrymandering. After they lost, if Republicans lost big and I think 08, they were like, oh, wait, but the census is coming. And so they took the census and used the data from the census and they aggressively like fought to get into state houses. and then they won state houses, which meant that they could draw the districts, which gave them an entrenched advantage in Congress. And the Democrats are just nowhere on that right now. And so, like, that's one Republican. Literally, it's a technology advantage.

They have, like, specific software that was designed to learn how to draw districts better to, like, give the incumbent advantage. The Democrats, like, ah, uh-huh. And so, like, how, like, it's, I don't know, we talk about machine learning all the time and, like, how, like, the computers are getting smarter and they can win it all. a go and blah blah blah blah blah but like the computers are getting smarter and there's algorithms that can take data that's complicated and it will do like the number crunching and the synthesis to like give you the real world results you want like it is happening all around us in ways that we're not like acknowledging enough and like specifically with like drawing district lines and call gerrymandering

if you want because that's like that's the word um but like the idea that like the methodology that you apply tech to is different across these two parties. And they're trying to learn from each other or whatever. But one is applying it to like content and drawing district lines. And the other one is applying it to like get out the vote and like organizing protests. Right. Like yeah, those are radically different strategies and they have radically different real world effects. And it's simply like knowing and thinking of what a clever use of applying an algorithm.

There's a lot to learn right now from this blueprint that she, she's making essentially. and maybe her book will get more into it. And, Neal, you know, you mentioned earlier, like, I'm sure there are plenty of people and podcasts who will dissect, like, her demeanor or how she seems right now in the six months after the election. But at the end of the day, she has information that can be incredibly valued to her party going forward.

And so she's putting it out there. And, you know, it's like Mark Andreessen was also on stage at one point and made a really good point and said, you know, like, why would the people who voted for Donald Trump in this election at this point suddenly think, oh, yeah, next time, I should vote for a Democratic president again because right now everyone's paying attention to the problems that have surfaced throughout the country, you know? And so it's going to be like for the Democratic Party, it will be an uphill battle and especially battling these like sort of weaponized technological forces.

I mean, one of her solutions was like, this is a room full of billionaires. All of you should buy local TV stations. Yeah. Right? Like she just said it out loud. There's a lot of talk of that. Like will Lorraine Powell jobs buy the New York Times? Like, hey, you all have money.

Go buy the media. Yeah. Recode is a straight up. It came up like several times at the conference. Recode.net has a running list of everybody who said they're not running for president here, which is hilarious. It's pretty great. It's a big topic. All right.

That's enough politics, except for the next segment. I'm going to read an ad and we're going to have a little lightning around and we'll wrap this thing up. This episode of Vertraast also brought to you by tile. Look at that. If you've lost Wisconsin, for example, just put a tile on it. It's a little Bluetooth tracker. to tell you where it is and you can go to it. It's great.

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for a limited time, you get a free gift box with a multi-pack order. So go to gettile.com slash verge. Buy tile, find everything. Also visit Wisconsin. Slope. Side note about Wisconsin. So, Nealai did stand up and ask Hillary Clinton a question about Wisconsin campaign in Wisconsin.

And after that, I witnessed multiple people just walk by Nealai in the hallway and go, Wisconsin. Because he prefaced it by saying, I'm from Wisconsin. Cool badgers. I think, yeah. I got another note from Lockhart-Steel. Because Hillary answered the question. It was a long answer, very detailed. And she prefaced one of the parts of her answer with, since you're from Wisconsin, you'll find this interesting.

And Lockhart Steele, our company, sent me a slack and he said, from now on, I will literally begin every time I address you by saying, since you're from Wisconsin, you might find this interesting. And yes, Lockhart Steele is a real person. Yeah. That is his name. Locksteel. He's an AI.

He's just a very dapper AI. He's the color of a phone. Ooh, Lockhart's a good phone color. Yeah. Anyway, a bunch of stuff, odds and ends to wrap up. Dieter, you are going to review the Chromebook Pro. You had one. I have it.

I have it. With me right now. So I'll tell you. And I try to use it. Deeder and I are staying in the same villa. We have a villa. Casey is staying in the tower, our villa in the monks cabin.

It's amazing. The princess sweet as we call it. It's like the tower. But I watched Deeter come into our villa. We're like sitting in the living room. He opens his Chromebook Pro. He's like, I really like this. I won't say the score.

He was like about to publish a review with a score. Yeah. The whole thing was written. We were putting the score in. We're getting, I think I'm going to give it a higher score. a day later, what you've actually published are the words, don't buy the Chromebook Pro.

Yeah. What happened there? So the story with Chrome OS is that they're trying to get Android apps running on it. If you listen to Vergecast, I'm sure you've heard me complain about this. But the Android apps are in beta. And the way that the Android apps run on Chrome OS, it's not like there's like an embedded Android phone inside the thing. They are like tied into the OS.

And that can make the OS a little bit unstable. And so the solution is don't. Do that. Don't use them. Just use it as a Chromebook because you can do Chromebook stuff. You can open web apps and it's great. And so I had some crashes in the first couple days I was using it. But I was like, oh, it's because Android.

So I'm going to stop using Android apps, reboot the thing. And then I won't crash. It'll be fine. So I did that and everything seemed fine. And then it super wasn't. It was just like, you know when Chrome runs out of memory, it's like, oh, snap. Like every single app window and tab was like, oh, snap all the time once I hit more than 10 or 12 tabs.

So I asked Google, what, what's the story? Like, we're going to fix it. Like, when? They're like, soon. I was like, well, the thing is being sold to people right now. So yeah, I'm going to tell them that it's broken. And that's what I did. But like the problem with like the advice to don't use Android apps on a Chromebook is like this Chromebook comes with a stylus.

And when you pull the stylus out, a little thing pops up that's like, draw on the screen. And that like brings you. to an Android app. It brings you to Google Keep. And so like the core feature of the thing involves a thing that makes it unstable. But it's also unstable on its own. So anyway, I do intend on reviewing this thing. I also intend on reviewing it when Android apps come out of beta in like three months. I'm going to have reviewed this thing like eight times, but by the time it's all over. But for right now, until I tell you, or somebody tells you that they have issued a update to Chrome OS to resolve these stability issues, I would not buy it. Well, thanks for

Ruining Father's Day, Dieter. Yeah. I mean, you could trust that they're going to good. Dads and grads are pissed off. Dads and grads have a bone to do. I mean, I trust that Google will fix it, and I trust it when they fix it, this thing will be good. But I don't trust it so far that I would recommend that people go out and spend $550 on based on that

assumption. Well, it's miserable timing. Yeah. Because next week is WWDC. Yep. And suddenly the whispers have increased that something is happening to the iPad to make it more computer-like. We obviously don't know what that is. Windows 10S.

Yeah. Right. Like there's a, I wrote this article like, I don't know, a month ago. There's a confluence of like, take these managed operating systems that you can't mess around with and that

way they're more secure and they're updated more often and like level them up just enough that they could actually replace a Mac or a PC. Like that's what that's what these three companies are trying to do. Yeah. And Google was first and they just fell on their face. Oh, we'll see. Um, Z two play came out. Yeah.

I just wanted to do a little pour one out moment. The droid brand at Verizon appears to be gone. That's fine. Is it fine? It's great. I never liked the droid brand after they released those incredibly misogynistic commercials at the launch of the original droid. Yeah.

It's like, you're a man. You like manly things. You should get a droid because the iPhone is for girls. It was, they hired like a fake Dennis Leary. Yeah. Just a dude like Dennis Leary bits. They literally had, they had this like, you know, flashing, like give you a seizure commercial or like just crazy scenes happening all the time.

And like it was like a fighter plane shooting off into the sky and then an explosion and like just bam, bam, bam. And then the droid appears. But if you slow it down or watch it, one of the scenes in this crazy seizure inducing, you know, commercial was literally a banana hitting a female mannequin in the face. Like what? Yeah. It was a different...

What? Very recent time. Good God. Yeah. I mean, there's symbolism and then there's like, come on. We used to tear apart those commercials on this show. R-I-P, droid. Droid.

I do miss that sound. But for a long time, that was the dominant Android. That's what people called Android. Oh, you got a droid. Yeah. It's weird that that has just phased in and out of our culture and it's just over. What do Android phone owners call their phones these days if not droids? Just androids?

They call, I have a Samsung, I have a galaxy, maybe. No one says I have a galaxy. I have an Android. I don't have a galaxy. Yeah, right. So you never say it.

We're talking to engineer Austin, by the way. Thank you. You proved my point. Exactly. Well, here's what I want you to do. If you have an Android phone,

think in your head what you say and then tweet that at Back 1. Oh, God damn. Just do it. If it's a Google phone, they just say they have a Nexus or a pixel. Yeah. But I guess it's all the other ones

that get a little bit. People don't say like, I have a mate eight. When somebody who knows nothing, when somebody who knows nothing about phones walks up to you and says, what kind of phone is that? What do you say? Yeah.

Right? You don't want to get in a whole conversation with them. You don't want to agitate for whatever. Yeah. You just want to be like, oh, I have a blah. I think people say Samsung. I think I'll say Andrew. Anyway, tweet it all back on.

Casey, this one's for you. This is just your moment. Right. Skype has been redesigned. Oh boy. And it's getting stories. As you know, if you've downloaded any app that has any social feature in 2017,

stories are the new thing, ephemeral collections of pictures and videos that disappear 24 hours after you posted them, of course, pioneered by Snapchat, gloriously ripped off by Instagram, and then the rest of Facebook's product suite. And it's now to start a pop up everywhere. Medium sort of has a version of stories,

believe it or not, if you haven't seen those. But so, yeah, so Skype has now announced today in a blog, post that they are redesigning the app, rebuilt it from the ground up. It's now going to be a way to share every part of your day. And so, of course, that is going to include stories. Skype stories. I really love when there's a utility that everyone uses for just one thing, which is very easy,

fast video chatting. And the company decides, you know what this really needs? Stories. This needs something that is completely, I'm going to use the word again, non-essential to the core functionality of what this thing does. I literally think of Skype. I don't even think of it for video chat. It's how we call people for podcasts. Yeah. It's it's like the default calling service on the internet. Like it's it's achieved that level where I can just ask virtually anyone, you want to be on a podcast, what's your Skype? And there's always an answer. When I go on other people's podcast, when you have people on your podcast, Lauren, I'm sure, you just say, what's your Skype? And every, it's not like a question. It's not like install it. You're not saying

instructions. It's that or international calls. Yeah. That's pretty much. But now it's, you got to look at the UI. The UI looks insanity. It's pretty wild.

I'm actually disappointed that I can't just use it right now. Like apparently the new iOS app isn't going to come out for a month or more. But yeah, it does look pretty wild. I think it's, if you're looking at it strategically,

I think you would do this for the same reason that WhatsApp introduced stories, which is it's popular internationally, places where Snapchat does not have a big user base. So I actually, do think for a lot of Skype users, this probably will be their first introduction to stories. I think the question is, are any of them going to use it? And results have been very mixed.

WhatsApp says that actually already more people are using WhatsApp every day than are using Snapchat just for the stories feature alone. But then you can look inside the Facebook app and almost nobody is using stories. Yeah. So you just kind of never know. Yeah. I don't know if this is like empirically true. The main Facebook app has gotten incredibly slow lately. Yeah. Have you noticed? It's like They've definitely taken their eye off the ball of just the core, literally the core product that they make. Well, like, look at the size of the updates. I mean, they're like three, 400 megabytes each. They're packed full of AR filters and God knows what kind of advertising spyware.

So, yeah, they're big, juicy apps. Squeeze them. Just squeeze those apps and they just drip. Just drip in with social. I really want this to stop. I can't communicate enough how uncomfortable this makes me. much I want to stop. I hope in their next app

release notes, they say, you know, bug fixes and juicier. Just for Casey. Pumped full of juice. It's still going. They're very moist. They're full of juice. I don't want to die.

Oh, no, you do not just use the M word. Sorry. Anyway, Bixby, everyone's favorite. Andy Rubin had a nice burn. What was it? Bixby and Cortana. A bix burn.

while it was like talking about assistance on stage and he was like blah blah blah and he goes i didn't mention bixby or cortana in any room and goes thank you for not mentioning that yeah but bixby is delayed because it can't understand english which is yeah i mean they're presumably they made it understand korean first because they're a Korean company um my whole thing is like but they're shipping the phone with a button that launches the thing that doesn't work the button like yeah exactly Duh Dedicated button on it Or just release the update that lets you remap the button

Yeah, all the apps that lets you remap the button now They're basically Bixby hacks So it launches Bixby and then it launches the thing you want And some of them are pretty quick But like every now and then you'll hit it And be like, eh, but like You're using an essay Yeah, and I would say one out of ten times

I pull my phone out of pocket I accidentally hit the Bixby button And I look at the Bixby screen And like it hasn't updated And so like I just look at my phone And it's like, ah, how do I got out of this. Oh look, Steve Bannon is trending.

Bixby, the dog that makes you feel bad. Literally what I... Negative emotion puppy. It was like a dog butler. And now it's just this like bad news. Anyway, stopping. I was just trying to come up with other words for dogs, but I'm not

classically improv trained. Leave this to the professional hotel. Biggsby would like to recommend that I install a moon theme. It would like me to know that today's weather is loading. It, the Paris Agreement is trending right now, of course. That's happening in real time as we're recording this, right?

I have never, ever in my entire life, either in person or on the internet, indicated any sort of interest in hockey, despite the fact that I live in Minnesota, but they really want me to know that there's a dude who plays for the penguins that's really quiet. Thanks, Bixby. Bixby. Bixby.

All right. Last one. Lauren, this one's for you. Oh, okay. Mark German had his little, like a one-sentence scoop that Apple's Siri speaker is in production. In production. Someone at this conference told me that Apple's been working on this idea and fits and starts for no fewer than six years. Wow.

Can't verify it. It's one of those bar-type conversations. But in production, they're in the market. Do you think they're going to, you think we're going to see at WBC? You think they're going to make a big splash? Are they going to have it under, what do you think? Side note to that, Siri has been around for six years. So that means, right, because it launched in 2011.

So that means that this speaker has been in production for six years, that like the moment Siri launched, Apple was thinking about it in hardware form other than like an iOS. device. Well, it was fits and starts. I don't think they've been working on whatever they're going to do. I don't think Johnny Ive has been chiseling away at a block of Luma for six years. Maybe he has been. Maybe it's going to be the most perfect speaker yet. But most amazing, that's what I'm looking for. Unapologetically. Speaker. Speaker. So here's my thing. Do I think that if Apple introduces a speaker that like people will run out and buy it? Absolutely. I think they will. I mean, I think there are a lot of Apple fans and iPhone users obviously out there in the world

and enough so that people would be willing to get this a chance, especially people that maybe haven't invested yet in an Amazon Echo or a Google Home. But I do think more so maybe than with other, and this is just my opinion right now, and it could morph like many times in the next few years as voice control becomes even more prevalent. But I do think that voice more than devices that we, like other devices that we use in our everyday life, our everyday lives is something that like once you're sort of hooked into one system, it's very hard to also hook into another. So, you know, in my apartment right now because I'm a nerd, I have, you know, Amazon Echo. I have Google home. I'm guessing those are only the only really like voice control things, but then the lights I have

are a Lutron kit that is compatible with home kit, right? So I've got like a few different like voice things going on at home. And I'm, I'm going. I don't tell. It's just a pain. Like you just kind of want to talk to one. Once you start saying, okay, set a timer, okay, turn off the lights. Okay, change the, you know, I want to watch this programming on the TV. You want, I don't know, it just seems like it's, you just want it to be unified. You don't want that kind of fragmentation when it comes to voice. So I think the one challenge that Apple may have is just if there are people who are really already sort of hooked into Amazon's Alexa and that seems to be doing the job for them, then I'm not sure what the value proposition is for them to add another speaker to that setup. Right. At this time. I mean, it would have to be really good. I mean,

look, Siri in this moment cannot play Spotify, right? So, like, unless this speaker comes along

with much better third-party integrations than they have historically been willing to let Siri make, I think it's dead on arrival.

Interesting. That's like, that's a, I don't know. I think that it, they're going to have a minute that, like,

they'll have a few more integrations that'll be fine, but what they're going to do is they're going to get on stage and say, You can get an Alexa that is made by Amazon and who knows what Amazon is doing. They're trying to sell you stuff. You can get a Google home and nobody trusts Google.

Or you can get the series speaker, we protect your privacy. Yes. Here's our magical system that doesn't even connect it to the internet until the microphone recognizes your voice. You know, whatever the hell it is. Like just saying we are the speaker that protects your privacy, they're just going to say that over and over and over again. And the thing will be beautiful. No matter what, if the thing can tell you the weather and set an alarm, they'll sell it.

And not for nothing. The echo is not like a beautiful device by any stretch of the imagination. No, and it's not a good speaker. And it's not a good speaker. Yeah, well, that's the other thing is apparently they're going to do the thing that Sonos does where you like put it in a room and it like makes a bunch of noise and listens for the sound bouncing around the room and then it tunes itself to the room. That's cool.

That's the most annoying process I go through with any audio device in my house. Like literally my wife is like, are you going to do the thing? Because I need to leave. Because it just makes a lot of chirping sounds at you. they said I was going to have seven speakers in it or something that was in the Bloomberg report but when Apple has done these other platforms you know what like can play Spotify is like the iPhone like it's there when you plug an iPhone into carplay Spotify is there right so they're not completely blind to the fact that these other things exist right I just think like Siri has

traditionally been underpowered I think Apple is coming in a little bit late I mean I'm probably being a little bit too negative I agree with you guys I think that Yes, it will have a certain base. And yes, privacy will help them sell a decent number of them. But like, let's also look at the broader market. Like, Alexa is really on a tear. It has a lot of developer support already. It's probably going to be a lot cheaper than the Apple device, right?

The dot is like they're selling for $40. Yeah. So these are all good things. Yeah. We'll see. WCs next week. It is. It's party.

Lauren and Deter are going to be there. Jake Hasnack is going to be there. I'm going to be live blogging from New York. Yep. That would be in New York for a variety of reasons. Walt might be there. Yeah, Walt's going to be there. He probably cracks some jokes in the live blog.

Yes, stay tuned. And Casey Newton. Will you be cracking jokes in the live blog as well? I'll absolutely be cracking jokes. Amazing. It says Casey's only job. Is there a live blog? Will you be offering your searing insights?

Yes, and then responding to people on Twitter saying, why are there so many bad jokes in this? Yeah. Just give me the facts. It's because you can watch the fucking stream yourself. That's why. That's what I tell them. No, we love you and we want you to join a live blog.

I didn't mean to swear at you. The hypothetical Twitter person. Also, June 9th, which is next week, I believe. Walt Mosberg. Yep. Last episode of Control Walt Delete. Live. Live.

In New York. From the School of Visual Arts with Dieter Bone is going to be there. It's going to be great. Walt had, look, here's the thing. Walt had his send-off here. There was an emotional moment. Dick Haslow interviewed Walt, which was amazing. I encourage everybody to go watch that video.

It was really fun. There was a really wild story about Steve Jobs and iTunes for Windows that was told. A wild story about, I'm going to say all four of these words, Bill Gates Taco Bell. Just like, go listen to it. It was great. But that was Walt's send off to, like, his audience of billionaires and tech CEOs. I am very happy that the last thing that he's doing with us is a room full of his readers and listeners, because those are his people. So that's June 9th.

Well, obviously you have it out afterwards. But if you're in New York, there's still some tickets left. Somewhere under 100 tickets left, I want to say. Yeah. It might be under 50 of this one. It sounds fast. It's like 50 or so left. But come out.

We'd love to see you. You can hang out with Walt. There's a whole thing. So June 9th, Lauren has a podcast. You want to plug your podcast? Yes. It's called Too Embarrass to Ask. And it's in the same place as you found this podcast.

It's with Kara Swisher, the executive editor of Recode, and the person who I don't know, just kind of hounds Silicon Valley tech executives the most of anybody that I know. And it's really fun. And we try to answer all the questions you have about tech. This week, we have a very special episode. So when is the Virchcast airing? It's tomorrow? Tomorrow. Okay, great. So I'm going to spoil the surprise right now. Tomorrow's episode of Too Embarrass to Ask Friday's episode is with the one and only Walt Mossberg. It's kind of a send-off episode. And, you know, usually we take questions from people online who just ask, you know, hey, Walt, what laptop should I buy and that sort of thing? or whatever it might be. In this case, we got questions from, oh, I don't know,

you know, Cheryl Sandberg and Mark Cuban, Jack Dorsey, Susan Wichitsky of YouTube, Bill Gates, and a few others who sent in their questions to Waltz, and he was very surprised, and he has some really great answers. So she'll definitely want to listen. I love that. It was really fun. And actually, he does tell the Taco Bell story there as well. It's never going to Walt's legacy Taco Bell. Kara Swisher, speaking which, host, Recode, D-Code, which is wonderful. And my thing, favorite, the nerdiest of the podcast, Peter Kafka's Recode Media. And if you have a chance to go and watch all the videos of the interviews on stage from the Code Conference, I really

encourage you to do it. Peter and Kara are just incredible interviewers and the whole show was great. So if you want to watch the CEO of Time Warner squirm in his chair, Peter Kafka can deliver that experience to you. But that's it for us. I love doing the show with you guys here. As tired and loopy as we are in this opulent ballroom, it was great. We week here. And we'll be back next week. That's right with WWDC stuff with WWC news and then obviously the live control out delete. And that's it. That's a rich cast. Rock and roll. Snip, step. Paul. Bye. Bye.