The Vergecast - Daydream, Playstation Pro, Snapchat, and Instagram

Episode Date: November 11, 2016

Here we are, a few days after the election. With the world still adjusting to the future, we thought we’d give you a break from it all and briefly talk about what we know best: the future of technology. This week we have reviews for the Playstation 4 Pro and Google Daydream, the continuing saga of adapting to a plug drought, and Snapchat’s new Spectacles that were released to the public this week. So sit back, relax, (unless you are driving... if you’re driving and listening to this please focus on the road), and let us fill you in with the Verge updates you may have missed this week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yeah, everyone ready? Sure. I'm all the way up. Yeah. How this all goes? Yeah, I'm all the way up. Hello, welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast, the verge.com. Inside about technology and culture and science and emotions.

The top shelf liquor brand called Cizzer Vodka. Is it top shelf? Oh, yeah. What? Yeah, I don't know, man. I don't know. Yeah. It feels kind of well to me.

Behind like the lock box thing, or just you just had the, reach up really high. You have to be a It's just a premium spirit. It's, it's, see, the rock box thing is like too much. I'm not, I'm a vodka for the people. It should be like premium. It should be inexpensive and for everybody.

Yeah, premium. Premium everybody. Cut through the night. Cut through the night implies some sort of ease of use and accessibility. No, it implies like, you're dressed up. You're feeling good. You're at the club. Cutting through the night. Cool.

You get through, you get around the line. You don't, you wait two minutes for an Uber, not 15. You know how I know that I'm old. Yeah. said clurb and it made me think of um coach z from home star runner he was unable to say words that end in obi and they always end in r b jorb yeah home star runner was amazing the was the brothers chaps chapman brothers yes right i saw them live at south by southwest so this is just a throwback episode anyway look here here is the situation i'm nilai petal paul miller's here hello hello dita bona's here

hello hello this is just a throwback three person verge cast episode i'm ready for it it's a return No. You might say we're making it great again. You might, but you wouldn't. Anyhow, here is the situation. It's obviously the week of the election. There is President-elect Trump is a real thing. If you were interested in talking tech and politics, Walt and I did a whole hour talking

about the policy proposals of President-elect Trump, how they might affect the companies. He's talked about you should go listen to Control Walt and please. Because it was a fun episode, Walt is very smart. He was a DC security reporter for a long time before he became a tech columnist. It's a great episode. He's a lot to say. All of it's brilliant. All of us are just kind of exhausted by the election, by politics.

So we're going to do, in full disclosure, there's a lot to say. And I think for the next four years, we're going to talk about politics a lot because there's a lot coming down the line. In full disclosure, I voted for Clinton, Dieter, I believe you did too. No, wait, both of you. I'm going to accuse. Damn it. Jacques Hughes. Deere did not vote because he moved recently. And I didn't get registered in time and I didn't get my absentee ballot in time.

Shuckus. It's the first time since I was 18 and I feel just absolutely awful about it. Yeah. And then Paul, Jacques Jus, was a Trump supporter. Right. But you also chose not to vote because you live in New York State. And I'm leaving. And I didn't. I did. I moved recently to kind of. Yeah. You moved to like a higher spiritual existence. You like went up a plane.

Anyway, Jacquesquez both of you. You are the 46% of Americans who led us to wherever we are now. It's our fault. But I just want everybody to know that. Trust me, there is plenty for us to discuss. And I assure you that for the next four years, if you've been listening to show for any period of time, you know that I'm not shy about politics. You know, Paul isn't, you know, data.

Like, there is so much to talk about. And if you want to hear it right now, I encourage you to go listen. to me and Walt talking about it because I just did that for an hour with him yesterday. But there's also some tech news this week. Personally, I could use a break. I think all of us could just use a break. So we're just going to be politics free for this episode and talk about some tech news. Yeah, late night watching the election returns, I was laying out my PlayStation 4 review to publish on the website.

There yeah. And it did really well. I have to say, that was surprising. People really wanted to read that PlayStation Pro review yesterday. So let's get into it. You reviewed the PlayStation Pro. Yeah, it's weird because it's so hard to say what's true 4K and like, like, basically, you could get a super powerful PC right now and you can take any game that is modern

and render it at a relatively high frame rate in 4K and it will look great. But on a home console, you're typically, if you get the Xbox 1S, they have like game upscaling or a lot of TVs do upscaling from 1080p to 4K. And then there's kind of a new middle way, which is the PlayStation 4 Pro, which has more than twice as powerful as the regular PS4 and takes games that run at 180p on the PS4 and outputs them at 4K really well.

Yeah. With some cheats depending on basically how modern the game is. If it's a pretty old game, it's easier for it to put it out just true 4K. If it's a newer game like Call of Duty Infinite Warfare, they do this thing called checkerboard rendering, which you could kind of see where they kind of, I don't know how it works,

but it makes the game look super sharp, and it uses all the pixels of a 4K TV. And if you have a 4K TV, like a lot of times the user interface of your 4K TV is not even in 4K. It's so rare to find really sharp, perfectly sharp content. And I felt like I got a lot of that when I play. played around with the few games that are available for the PS4 Pro. That's the other thing is the developers have to update their games.

Yeah. And not every game is going to get updated. And maybe your favorite game won't get updated. And so maybe it's not worth it to you. What were the best games that you played? I think Call of Duty looks great. Yeah. I played Last of Us in 4K HDR.

And it was just wonderful. It's like you can obviously see these old graphics, but they're so sharp. I will say I was really excited for VR. Being way better, it was not way better. Yeah, that's like probably the most disappointing thing to me is that I was expecting it to mean VR would be way better. But I don't know, I bought one. I've never owned a PlayStation in my entire life.

And so I'm actually like kind of ridiculously excited to like go through a bunch of PS3 games and download and play them that I never got to play. You got Crash Bandicoot? You got Spiro the Dragon. Well, I was like a huge PS2. nerd and then I made when the Xbox 360 was HD first

you know and so I made like the platform shift and it was more of a computer and I've just been in the Xbox. Well Xbox live for a long time. Yeah that was a big deal than the network play for PS4 PlayStation. I did eventually buy it but it doesn't matter I've just been in the Xbox

world and the Xbox one for me just has never done it. It's too much of a computer for whatever reason and the TV stuff was a nightmare They just canceled a bunch of Xbox TV accessories. You see that? So I'm like, this is it.

Like, I don't have a 4K TV. I suddenly want one, and I suddenly want a PS Pro, or PS4 Pro. And I know that the VR stuff is not better because of the pro, but I kind of want that too. I kind of just want to spend a bunch of money in my living. It's slightly better. It's just not drastically better. Yeah. How much heat does it kick out?

Because I want to put this thing in my cabinet and seal it up, hide it away. I think it's not pretty. I think it's pretty hot. Okay. I don't think that's the best idea. I'm sure it will be fine, and obviously this is a home console, and they make it tolerant of those sorts of. But basically, Sony has up the clock speed. Sony kind of, in addition to, like, doubling the size of the GPU, but it's still kind of the same architecture, they kind of overclock the CPU and overclock the RAM, kind of.

So it's just, it's a hotter console, but, you know, maybe you'll live. Maybe you'll die. There was no warning on the box. Please don't put this in a small space. But I just feel like it's relatively hot for a constant. I mean, I can open the doors when I want to play it. That's not the end of the world for me. There you go.

Yeah. I mean, my rack gets pretty hot. But I feel like my Xbox is pretty hot. Is it hot on the Xbox? I think so. Well, it's also kind of talking about the Xbox One. Yeah. The Xbox One is so large.

Yeah. It's a massive device. There's kind of room for that heat to move around. This has a very concentrated heat, right? blowing out the back and the surface of the top back of the console is very hot. Yeah.

Yeah, I would say it's hotter than the Xbox one. I watched the election on my friend's LG OLED TV. And like, you know, I was sad. But I was also like dazzled by how beautiful the TV was.

Now I really want a new 4K OLED. Well, see, an OLED and then you get HDR. Yeah. See? Oled is the thing. Like HDR YouTube stuff or play the Last of Us?

Yeah, yeah. YouTube supports, 4K HDR now. Yeah. This is the moment. Are we at the tip in point? I am finally happy with my Vizio P65, by the way. You're unhappy.

It was bad for a while, but I'm happy. I was unhappy for a while because the controller app on Android was garbage, but they've updated a bunch of stuff and it seems to hang on to Wi-Fi better now. I will say, this isn't in the review because this did not happen to me while I was reviewing the console. So if you plug the console into the wrong plug on the 4K Vizio that we have to review stuff, at the office, and then you boot up Last of Us,

it's like, hey, this doesn't support 4K HDR. Huh. So we're going to play this at 2K HDR. Yeah, because the Vizisors have like a dedicated gaming HTML port. They've got a better plug for it. And then you also have to go into the settings,

which is inside of an app on Vizio and to turn on HDR. So I did that and it worked fine the whole time I was reviewing it. Today, I had it plugged into the correct HTML port, open up Last of Us, and I got snow on my TV.

Whoa. And it basically kind of crashed the PS4. It started spinning up the fan, getting hotter, hotter, and I just had to turn it off, turn it back on. Then it worked, and then I, like, exited Last of Us, and then I opened Last of Us, and it snow again. So I don't know what's going on with that. You know what's great is digital connections.

Yeah, we should move everything, even commonly used audio signals. And shake digital connections. With DRM on that. Having ports that are shaped the exact same way work differently, having being able to plug different things into the same plug shape. That's the best. There's two HDMI ports on my TV that say best, but then there's another HDMI port that has kind of a green barrier around the icon.

And that's the HDR. Really? Yeah. I know. There's Best and then there's the green circle. Yeah. Also, this Vizio TV, I know I'm not reviewing this 4K. It's one of those ones that comes with like the large fablet.

This is her whole thing. This is Deeter has the same thing, right? Yeah. It needs to update. So I need like a Google account. Oh my God. To sign in to update the remote software. But that's like a problem we have here because we share it with 100 people.

If you bought it, you would just sign it. Yeah, I guess I'd be fine with signing in and my Google account. It still seems weird. So would you tell me to this is a moment that I should go all in on the 4K life? Especially if you're at all considering getting a PEOC life. is four. Yeah. You for $2.99, you can get a slim. Congratulations. You got a small console. Yeah. For $100 more, you can get something that is literally more than twice as powerful as the slim. And for certain games, they'll look way better, especially once you have a 4K TV. They'll also look better

on 1080P, some games. So that just seems like the thing to do. It's $100 more. When they, Sony first announced this, I did not think it was, I thought it was going to be like a $500. console. Yeah. So I just think it's a really good value. If you already have a PS4, I think it's harder to decide, do I upgrade, do we wait for Scorpio, do I put this money into like a gaming PC or something like that? But if you don't have a PS4, it seems like an obvious choice to me.

Would you do this or a gaming PC? This was kind of the conceit of your review. Well, yeah, I mentioned in that, like for $400, you can get a really great graphics card. I, Paul Miller, recently built a gaming PC. Yeah. And I'm kind of, I realize my favorite game in the world. is Overwatch. It's all I care to play. And it's better on PC. It's built for PC and the mouse and keyboard. And so I'm just, I'm becoming a PC gaming person. I also think VR is, is just so much better on PC. I know that the PlayStation VR is, is in some way simpler. And it might get some more interesting content or better branded content and it's very comfortable headset. But the graphics on the Vive and Oculus are so much better than PlayC's.

station, in my opinion, and that's really important to me. Yeah. It's kind of a VR moment, too. I was hoping that we could have Adion to talk about Daydream VR because she reviewed it this week. Unfortunately, she's a little sick, so she can make it. But her read on that was, you know, there's two directions it's going in. And Google is getting, the Daydream is a better expression of the mobile first VR experience.

She really likes the headset. Yeah. She thinks it's really comfortable. And then there's obviously like this high power thing happening on the P.E. And the Oculus today just lowered its requirements for PCs, right? Yeah, well, and Daydream comes with a controller that is not as like accurate, obviously, as like the Vive controller or the new, the upcoming Oculus Touch controllers. But the Oculus Rift right now for the PC ships with an Xbox controller. Yeah.

That's like no hand motion. So I think that's pretty cool that the Daydream has some sort of motion tracking. Deider, how, you know, I still haven't put, move my SIM from my iPhone success to a pixel. but I think about it every day. I want you to know. I can't order one yet. I'm going to try to buy a picture. Okay. I mean, it is a Vergecast. You really should. So I guess I'll talk about Daydream for a second, although again, I should disclose that my

wife works for Oculus. Shock you. I've used one for... Come on. I've used it for about 10 minutes, and that remote is actually, I think, and he says there's a little bit of drift. I think that's probably true. But they were really smart about, like, giving rules to game designers about what you

should and shouldn't try and do. with a thing. So maybe I talked about it in the Vergecast, but like in the Harry Potter game, it just sort of assumes that like the thing is always like tethered to your arm. And so you can't swing it around wildly in every single direction but it just sort of, it's like you've got it on like

a pivot. Like imagine your elbow never moves and then the thing moves around. And when you limit it in that way, it actually is like pretty accurate and also feels way more immersive than you would expect it to because like even that little bit of movement is

enough. And the fact that you can use it to just point at things instead of the gears, ridiculous, you know, temple mounted D-pad. It's just great. But the big deal with VR is, or what Daydream is, is do they have the content? And the answer seems to be, eh, most little, nobody knows. Although they do have YouTube. They have YouTube. So I was talking to, so Ben Popper wrote a piece about YouTube VR. I was just talking about it, and his read on it was, it's the future, and it's great, and it's all this streaming VR, and it's awesome, and then it clicks over, and it's like a giant buffering wheel, and then it, like, plays an ad, and it's, like, clockwork orange, because you can't look away from the advertising. You're just, like, trapped in the world with this ad. And he's like, that part needs to be worked out. But I think the YouTube VR stuff is really, I mean, that is the reason that I would want to get. I mean, I, you know, I can get a pixel, but I am so ready to switch to the primary thing and have the pixel be my primary phone and have the iPhone be the secondary phone. And I just, I don't know why.

They just can't move that SIM card. And it's all because of my message. Although Deeter and I have started using WhatsApp. Yeah. Dieter the other day was like, don't I message me. It's going to mess everything up or something. Yeah. Or don't try to.

Something will explode. You didn't want to do a FaceTime call. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Paul wanted a FaceTime. And I told him absolutely not. I refused to sign in a Facebook.

FaceTime because once I do, then all of a sudden I stop getting text messages. This reminds me, I still sometimes my parents will accidentally text me on my Google voice number that I signed up for like five or six years ago. Yeah. And then it like adequately transitioned away from. Becky hit me on hangouts today. I mean my if Becky hit me on a hangout today and it just like my whole world came to a halt because I was like, what is this?

What is this stone tablet that has appeared in the corner of my screen? Did it like, do a push notification? No, I got nothing. I like looked at my personal email. just like randomly. And I was like, oh, I'm ignoring my wife. Hello. She's like, where have you been?

I was like, what are you using? I don't know, man. Google and messaging. Yeah. Figure it out, man. Yeah, well, enjoy the pixel life. So WhatsApp, I was all excited about it because I was like, oh, they have a native desktop app.

Right. But it's a lie. It's such a weird thing. So you log into the native desktop app, but it doesn't sync to the cloud. It syncs to your phone. And only one device can sync to your phone at a time. So you open your laptop. and you click into WhatsApp and it's like, hang on a second and it finds your phone.

And then it asks, like, you're using it on another computer. Do you want to use it on this computer? Yeah, well, that's how they enable, and, and it goes through your phone so that they can, they have easier end-to-end encryption. It's really hard to end-end encrypt stuff across multiple devices. Apple's doing it. And so, who else? I don't know. Exactly.

By the way, the pixel Excel is still out of stock. By the way, I made a joke about it's going to be RCS. I want to be very, very clear. That was a joke. Rich communication services, Next Generation SMS is a dumpster fire. Yeah. We didn't, I didn't put this in our story about Sprint supporting Google's version of it, because I, but I should have.

Basically, the RCS that you can get on AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint, you know, it's like the replacement for MMS, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, are like basically incompatible with each other. Yeah. So they, it's, it's just a, it's just a huge flaming, pile of incompatible craft. Wasn't that an SMS, like early SMS didn't work? It was an early SMS problem and it was a persistent MMS problem. I was a, you know, like a lot of gadget nerds, I was a sprint fanboy back in the day. I'm talking like trio 650, trio 700 days here.

Yeah, they had all the HTC stuff and then all the Palm stuff. Yeah. And man, like you just like could not send pictures to people. Just didn't work. Hey, remember. Except for other, expect other sprint people. You could. If you, here's a, if you are a Vergecast listener and you're on Sprint, I want you to tweet at us and tell us why you're still on Sprint. I just want to know. You know what?

It's cheap. I want to meet a Boost Mobile user. We just got to do. There's tons of them. Like a Boost Mobile on the corner. Yeah. Like, like right next to my favorite restaurant in my neighborhood. And I was like, man, there's Boost Mobile.

I live pretty, pretty blessed life. I've got my T-Mobile store is literally next to my trains. stop. So you just go in there all the time and like hug a standee of John Lusher. I don't know. Why is that bless your wife? I don't know. Do you think the teenagers go hang out at like mobile phone stores the way that I used to hang out at Radio Shack? I got so excited earlier this week because they announced some of the casting for the next season of Stranger Things and it's Paul Riser is playing the bad guy. Perfect. Perfect. I think I'm mad about you when I think of Paul Riser. Why is that perfect?

Alien. Okay, sure. Alien? Yeah. I'm just. I'm just. I'm just. I think I'm mad about you. I think of Matt about you. I. I think of I mean, come on. Sean Assitt is playing, like, the kindly Radio Shack manager. Yeah. And so these kids are going to go, like, hang out at Radio Shack. That is totally what I did when I was a kid. I wouldn't hung on a Radio Shack. Did you just look at connectors?

That's what I did at Radio Shack. No, like, you could, like, solder shit at Radio Shack back in the day. Like, you could just go. And if you were friends of the manager, you'd be like, I want to build this little radio kit. And you'd be like, sure, there's nothing going on. Go sit in the corner and, like, make some stuff. And so I would just, like, buy the stuff that I wanted and, like, sit there and hang out

with the Radio Shack guy. I think what we've learned is that the need for a children's museum in Minnesota is very hot. I would hang out the Best Buy at the phone place where they sold phones at Best Buy and try to upsell people. Just like solo, like rogue upsell. Telling them that they needed Bluetooth because I was convinced Bluetooth was going to be the wave of the future. And it still is. Yeah. It's going to what's going on with your phone?

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dot com slash the verge. So we're back. Dieter's back. I'm back. Hello. All's back. Hey. The advertising is over.

We did it. We made it through. So Deeter was just complaining about while we had the ad break, which you didn't experience because I was reading the ad to you, but I was in a different temporal zone. Does it make any sense? I was in two places at once. That's the power of advertising. Think about it. Anyway, Dieter was just complaining about his MacBook.

It's trying to remember. Yeah, I had the plot of Primer. Oh, yeah. And I got really confused, and then I gave it. So this is a thing that's happening right now. The MacBook is a MacBook Pro. Vlad wrote a piece this week, which alternately correctly synthesized and channeled what a lot of Mac people are feeling about the pro.

And irritated a whole bunch of other people, which is, I think, peak flat, right? Saying things that everyone thinks that are very very, polarizing. Peak flattitorial. So the MacBook Pro is just a really difficult product to get your head around. It's the same thing I feel about the iPhone. I really like a bunch of new stuff about the iPhone 7. I just don't want to give up the convenience. I'm on planes a lot. I don't want to care. Yeah, but the difference between the iPhone 7 and the MacBook Pro is the iPhone 7 has a more powerful processor. Oh! Oh! Oh! So the MacBook Pro is causing a lot of consternation out there. I think it's really Interesting because I was just so fine with the iPhone 7 upgrade.

I was like, I'm willing to make these sacrifices. Yeah. I want a new phone. Looks fast. Great camera. Whatevs. I'm been fine with it. And then all of a sudden the MacBook Pro comes along.

It's like, oh, too many compromises for me, I guess. I've never seen anything like it. And, you know, we're still waiting on to review the touchbar one. That will happen very soon. but I have not seen as many people just talk about how disappointed they are with a computer. Apple says they're selling all in like crazy. I believe them. I totally believe them.

People desperately need new MacBooks. It's been a long time. So I'm sure people are just buying them. But one of our video directors yesterday told me that this feels to her like the upgrade from Final Cut 7 to Final Cut Pro. Wow. Everyone in the world used Final Cut 7 and they put out Final Cut Pro 10. And everyone else stopped because they changed things and made it more inconvenient. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, that was just her metaphor. It's not. I mean, here's like my overall take on the MacBook Pro. A pro machine from Apple has historically meant like the masses can still go get it. They go get the basic spec model. It is more powerful than they need. It is beautiful and light and fast and great.

And these new machines match that to a T. but the pro machine is also historically meant that if you are a quote unquote edge case, if you are a superpower user, there is a way for you to speck the thing out, go bonkers, and make it a beast. And the combination of like the, I don't know, the corner that Apple is stuck in with regard to what Intel processors are available to them that they trust. Yeah. Add that to the, you know, the hassle of dongles and USBC.

and that's not even getting into like the problems with USBC as a spec, which we could get into if you wanted to. But the combination of those two things is like, it just leads to like this fundamental feeling that like the people at those edge cases who used to be served by Apple do not know if they are currently or ever going to be served by Apple. And it's like caused some stress. And there's been so much pent up desire for new MacBooks for so many literally years that if the ones that came out Like, don't perfectly match what it is you need?

You're like, well, what do I do now? I don't know. Yeah. And then Apple not talking about the rest of the Mac lineup at all, which is equally aging. It just has a lot of people nervous. And the context for this is Dan just reviewed the Surface book, the newest one, and it's like kidded out to the hill, right? It's like the most powerful laptop you can buy. And Apple's thing is not that.

Well, it's not like a gaming laptop. Right. Right. In its zone, it's the most powerful thing of its kind that you can buy. Yeah, it's unapologetically just like, he called it a brute, and it really is like brutish. Like, especially after using a MacBook Pro, like picking it up, but the deck is a little bit thicker. It just, it feels just huge. It just feels like, you know, when you're playing a video game and like you get to the next level and you're really not ready for it yet,

and then there's a big, huge monster, and it just destroys you. That's what that laptop is to me. It's, what, you skipped ahead a little bit. You need to go back and grind it out. Yeah, yeah. I get it. Yeah, I just, I've never, I've been talking to a lot of people. I've never heard so many people just be like, I'm not upgrading,

or a very common refrain, which I think is fascinating, is I'm going to go find the top-end spec of the last generation. and then that'll get me out. Like I bought one in 2011 or 12 if I just buy the last one at the top spec, it'll carry me forward for another couple of years. And hopefully, I mean, there's got to be like a mid-cycle KB Lake

upgrade coming to this machine. Yeah, but Apple hardly ever updates these faster than once a year. Yeah, no, they do early and late. Right, so like this is late 2016. They could do a mid-17. So almost year. If they do it next year, even late next year, that's still like an admission, right?

Like they don't update laptops that often. They had to update the original MacBook because it was like severely underpowered. But if they put out KB Lakes next year, that feels like they're like, yeah, we, me. Well, I mean, they can't get them right now. I mean, that's the big. Yeah, they're not available in the quad. So that's not their fault. And if they can do it, then I think that that'll bring.

a lot of people. That'll satiate a lot of people. But Deeter, I actually want to talk to you about the ports thing. And we talk about port on a show an awful lot lately. Don't we know. But Deeter's deep in the USB C spec hole. I've definitely hit my limit. Like if any, for me to go any further, I definitely need to like go back to Radio Shack and buy some gear. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to download the entire USBIF like spec for USBC and like print it out in a nice book for you. So there's the basic, I think probably one of the basic issues that is probably confusing people is USB C is the name of the plug. USB type C, just like there's type B, which is that weird square one for printers. And type A, which is the regular plug that you always plug in upside down.

Yeah. And then this is types. No, no. Yeah, you're right. And then there's the micro. There's the mini and the micro on the other side of the thing too. Yeah. This is type C.

That's just the plug. Then whatever you decide to send over that plug, and people make different choices. Like a lot of different choices. I think that's really confusing about these two. So these are Thunderbolt 3, but even on the MacBook Pro, the different sides are different speeds of Thunderbolt 3. Right. USB 3.1. You could also put USB 3.0 over Type C, but I think that's frowned upon.

I frowned upon. Look, I judge you. It's not personal. It's just, I think you made the wrong choice. And then there's a power delivery spec that's up to the belief... The power delivery spec is where things get just haywire, just crazy bad. You know, last year I had a MacBook get fried because I had a bad USB cable with a resistor that, like, allowed it to pull too much power. I still have that cable. Teeter gave it to me. Got to stop using it, man. Google just put out a like recommended hardware thing for devices that you use USBC and they're like

yelling at people for like using there's like pins that you know deliver power and other things but they don't all get used just like you know the old Apple 30 pin connector had like 27 pins that didn't do anything yeah so like Qualcomm apparently with quick charge is like just straight up just using some of the unused pins in a way that like isn't up to spec and you know Like Google just put out an advisory that was like, don't do that. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, they put out an advisory. You know, the cables are just flooding in, and the only way to know if they're safe is to go find reviews of them.

There's Google employee and like a friend of Google basically is in some like, you know, user group that just started like rabidly testing all of these things. On the election day, I went and like just dug into deep into Google plus threads about USBC because that was fun for me. And there's this whole like shaggy dog conspiracy theory about how Apple had these old USBC cables for the MacBook. And then they replaced them with a new version, but kept the same serial number. But it was higher, it was able to deliver higher, you know, amperage. And the old ones were actually not good. And so if you're going to go buy one, make sure you buy the rectangle box, not the square box, even though they have the same serial number. And there's a voluntary recall, but it's not really a recall.

You could just go and like replace your cable if you want, if it doesn't have a serial number on the cable. and like just on and on and on and on and like apple doesn't even fully i think 100% match precisely the USB spec because they had to do some weird stuff with like USBc to lightning like it just goes like crazy crazy so here's my counterpoint to all of this and i actually need to write this story and i was going to do it this week um but there was this event that was very distracting i'm not going to talk about what it was right i got a puppy look it's just a um um no Apple's changing all these ports. That's great.

USB, you know, even in Dan's Surface book review, he was like, look, it's got all these ports. I wish it had USBC. I think all of us agree that USBC is great. It's particularly great when you can charge your laptop and phone with the same plug. That's all amazing. But USBA is not going anywhere, right? I just bought a lamp for my house. It has USB plugs in the base.

It's easier to charge your phone. I replaced a power socket in my kitchen with one of those that has the two USB plugs in it. It's everywhere. And the strongest argument is that Apple ships the iPhone with a lightning to USBA plus. Right. So there's just that I have this in my mind, this argument that everyone in the world has built this infrastructure where the one end of the cable looks like USBA. And the other end of the cable looks like a billion other things. And I just don't know that it's not even so much data transfer as it is power.

We've built an alternate power economy around the U.S. It's the most successful power delivery standard on the planet. If you want to plug into a, you know, a standard wall plug, America uses different plugs than the UK, than, you know, Germany, blah, blah, blah, all around the world, you can need to bring these crazy ass adapters that not only adapt the plug, but adapt the voltage. Like, that's wild. But USBCA, or I'm sorry, USB, USB, it's like, it's the same damn thing, no matter where you go. Right. It always works. At a very low voltage.

I mean, remember when the iPad came out, a lot of plugs were not able to charge the iPad. In fact, you'd have to use, like, one specific plug on your, even on your Mac to charge it. Well, I made this really stupid mistake. This week, I plugged in my Echo Dot. I pulled it out of the drawer where it's been sitting and, like, plugged it in. And it's powered over micro USB. So I just grabbed any adapter I had and, like, plugged it in and it lit up. And it just started crashing over and over again.

It's like, this garbage echo dot on Amazon. And I was like, wait a second. And I went and I just plugged into a phone plug. Because there's no it. I'm used to almost every plug I have being the higher, being the higher amperage. Right. And like I just happened to grab one that wasn't because I always make sure to buy those plugs at the higher amperage. So I just like swap the plug and now the echo dot works.

But like that's a weird. That is like a corner case. Most people just use the plug. It comes. But now you're talking like, so you, the original spec was something like five volts and then the iPad was like, like 20 volts or watts. Man, I wish I was better. I've literally had to...

I sat down with an electrician and he drew me all these pictures about watts and volts and plumbing and the size of the pipe and all that stuff. Oh, yeah. Still, just don't get it. But we'll help you through it. USBC is a lot more. It's a lot more. And that means more things can break.

Turns out electricity is difficult. No, but like the thing I'm saying about USBA is they got away from it on the MacBook because I think Apple looks at that is data transfer ports. And as data transfer ports, they're really cool, right? Like, they're PCI Express. There's four PCI Express ports on this computer.

But if you want to... That is cool. You can... Charge anything that you've bought at a gift shop in the past 10 years. Yeah, it's just interesting. The fact that you can,

presumably, someday, buy a external desktop class GPU and plug it in a MacBook and then drive a display and it's all going to work, that is some... far-flung future shit. That's really cool.

There's nothing wrong with it. I love it. That whole future is great. The idea that you could get massively powerful rate arrays and they're going to transfer as fast as the internal drives. Like when I was a kid, like the internal drive versus the external drive, you always wanted the internal drive. But now you just like do this other thing and the computer is still really portable. That's neat.

But USBA, like, you know, it's Edison versus Tesla. Edison wanted, there's like a great, it's like the Atlantic wrote this great piece about it ages ago. It was like Edison wanted AC power delivery and Tesla wanted DC power delivery. like USB is Tesla's revenge and all that really happened was we put the transformers at the end of all the AC lines and others DC power to all these devices that we use every day it's like there's wild stuff here and I I need to like finish the sot and write this piece but the the I just don't think USBA is ever going anywhere I think it's the it's the end of the plug for most people and most things and the other end of the plug looks like something else and that is all about power but I mean so this is the the argument that I made in the piece I wrote over the weekend. Like there's entire McMansions that are getting built with like USB A plugs everywhere.

Like you're not going to tear down the McMansions. Although, you know, whatever. But those plugs in the McMansion aren't going to quick charge your Samsung. And maybe they shouldn't. Samsung's blow up. To burn your McMansion down. Sorry, dude. I think that Apple made the right decision on the MacBook pros not to put USBA ports on it.

I think it's worth the pain of the transition. I think it's worth the pain of dealing with all these dongles. I think it's worth the pain of like dealing with bad dongles and bad USBC wires. I think the only way, the only way that amazing, neat future you were talking about comes to pass is if we kind of force it a little bit. Yeah. And what's just weird and hilarious and strange to me is to be in this position,

saying this thing about a port when I have, literally the exact opposite opinion when it comes to the iPhone and the 3.5 millimeter headset check. Yeah, I mean, that's so weird. But if Apple, we're like flipsies. Yeah. It's a strange time.

It's because you carry your laptop in a bag where there's pockets to put the dongles. And the future that's getting enabled by USBC on laptops is so much more exciting than the future that is theoretically getting enabled by forcing people into the lightning ecosystem. It's so much better than the lightning ecosystem future and the wireless future that Apple's talking about.

Right. Yeah, that's true. I will say when I sit down to my desk at work, I plug in power and I plug in a USB hub. And to be honest, some changes at my job have kind of made me want to have an external monitor to you. That would be three plugs. And then my USB plug is a hub where I have like multiple keyboards and mice and my Ethernet, dongle is all sorts of stuff. plugged into that USB. So it's true. I don't think it's the I don't think it's the plugs that really get it for the other thing about this. We're

building about this last week. We're building a new office, right? We're going to move in new office in January and they're speccing out the conference rooms now for the new office. And a really important thing in conference rooms is people got to be able plug their laptops into the big display and the speakers and whatever. What plug should they put in there? A minute ago, it was very obvious that they should just have HTMLI plugs with the HDMI to Thunderbolt Thunderbolt 2. We have those plugs all over this office. Right. Now they just need

to buy a second set of dongles, but not everybody is moving the new laptop right away. So like there's a bunch of people the old laptop. I think they should buy everybody new laptops. That's the move. All right, half of you are fired and the other half of you get new laptops. That's how we run this business. This episode of the Vergecast is brought to you

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That is videoblocks.com slash, and it's all one word, Vergecast 2016 for that exclusive offer. Paul, let's start, Paul. Yeah. You every week. Hi, Paul. Every week I do a segment. It's called plugs for pros. And I feel a little silly doing it this week, even though I do it every week.

But I feel because we talk so much about plugs just now. Yeah. Typically, like to highlight some sort of dock or hub. that we've featured on Circuit Breaker this week. And this week it's OWC's USBC doc. It's called the Thunderbolt 3 dock. It's so confusing. Five USB 3.1 ports, two of which can charge devices.

An SD card reader, analog audio, optical audio, Firewire 800, mini display port, two Thunderbolt 3 USBC ports, which one of them you probably need to plug into your laptop and you can charge your laptop. It's got AC power supply. It's got Ethernet. It's just anything. It's also $279.

And so, Neely, when you buy me my new MacBook Pro that I need to be productive. I'll just fire one quarter of somebody else. Right, right. We're in a dock. Yeah, buy the dock. Thanks. It's a lot. I'm saying.

Budgets are simple. There's either you or new laptops and docs for everyone, and we've chosen new laptops and docs. that's um oh my god syri just turned on and started yelling at me laptops and dogs she knows she knows we're talking about her nothing like hey sirie no nothing not a word wow all right cool uh so let's talk about instagram and satch for just one minute yeah so snapchat which is actually called snap ink now which i think is a terrible decision everyone in the world knows what snap it snap chat is and as you know

that we have like the the bad screens in our elevators at work to like show some syndicated headlines from god knows where and i was like in the elevator and it was snap to sell spectacles and vending machines i was like no one knows they literally took all of their brand equity and threw it away to be called snap no it's fine it's bad it's bad anyway they put out spectacles are rolling out these are the glasses with the camera yes uh they're in vending machines right now in one city right yeah the vending machines look like giant minions Not vending machines. No. Vending machine. Well, yeah. It's currently in Venice Beach, California, our intrepid entertainment reporter, Brian Bishop, who spent all of October going to like real live horror experiences,

drove out and has been standing in line to use the vending machine for like six hours as of this recording. They're like warning him every 20 minutes that he may not. get them. They were supposed to be limited to, but they let's let people buy like five. The eBay market for these things is going bonkers right now. And, you know, literally nobody's like reviewed them or he knows exactly much about them. You need to like go hunting, which is like, I don't know, it's kind of an amazing way to release a product, right? Like Snapchat is about ephemeral messaging and this is like ephemeral retail.

Yeah, no, they made a product that is truly scarce. I mean, Ellen DeGeneres got like a pre-release look at it. That was about it. So you go to whatever, spectacles.com or whatever their website is, and they show you a Google map of where you can find a vending machine. I'm guessing it's like every day there's going to be a new one or maybe in a different location. I hope it's not just one a day.

That would be infuriating. Yeah. It would be hilarious. But yeah, like, people are just lined up in a parking lot right now waiting to put money into a vending machine to get a camera for your face. That's kind of like Google Glass. The video, I didn't know this before now. The video that the spectacles record, I knew it was a circle, but the way you view it depends on how you angle your phone. I don't know.

So when you angle your phone, you're looking at a different sector of the circle, if that makes sense. Yeah. It makes sense. So they're simultaneously landscape and portrait video because it's a circle. And how you angle your phone, it shows how you, but the video is so. You know that's going to be great for is Snapchat's notoriously excellent battery life usage. Why don't we kick on the accelerometer and the gyroscope while we use your battery up? The vending machine makes R2D2 noises.

It also looks like a minion. They had to know it looks exactly like a minion, right? Yeah. Uh, anyhow, the other thing about Spectacles I thought was really interesting is the battery lasts for 16 minutes. Are you kidding me? Yeah. I didn't know that. I think while recording.

So you can put 16 minutes. But I don't think they're assuming, I don't know. Wait, 16 minutes of recording space or battery is 16 minutes? Kid it. Should last you for a day of casual use or about 16 minutes? Yeah, 16 minutes. Like, well, reports. That's fine.

Do you really have more than 16 minutes of things that are interesting in your life? life every day? The answer is no. But are you going to wear these glasses all day long? Anybody has ever had in a single day. But here's the thing. I'm going to the skate park with my butts and I'm going to do some cool tricks and I'm going to fail for about 15 and a half minutes and then I'll finally land the cool trick. Oh shoot, it's 16 minutes and 30 seconds. We're not required. I mean, I know the way, I don't know. I just feel like the way you get a lot of good footage typically with any like head-mounted camera is you record a lot and then you splice out something good but obviously that's just not the model that they're going with yeah anyhow so that's where they're

going i love how snapchat every day can find a way to make me just feel super old you don't get it paul you're part of the go pro generation go pro not having a good week so that's where snapchat's going okay at the same time instagram which just basically put out a copy of Snapchat stories is like iterating on the story products. Now you can put links if you're verified, which is mostly sub-brands. Which is a revolution for Instagram.

Links, they admitted that links that the web exists. Congratulations. Yeah. Sorry. No, that's a real thing with Instagram. They added, you can put boomerangs directly in the thing now. You don't have to open boomerang as a separate app. And you can like app mention people.

And so they're, and they rolled it out. You know, their Explorer tab is, I think, way more successful. than Snapchat's Discover page. There's a real moment here when Snapchat, Instagram, and Instagram recall is Facebook. They're just head to head in this particular zone of how you capture things and distribute them to your friends. And maybe it's just because Snapchat makes me feel old. I think Instagram's doing a way better job.

See, Snapchat makes me feel old. Instagram makes me feel ugly. Yeah. I feel like, I don't know. I'm just not super plugged into either. Either thing. Yeah. So I feel a little out of my depth here.

A thing that happened was I, you know, there's like a bunch of people I followed on Vine, like basically Vine stars and Vine collapse. I'm like, follow me on Instagram. So I started following them Instagram. And I was like, you guys act way different on Instagram than you do on Vine. It's like a really weird thing. It's like, basically I was watching comedy shorts on Vine from these Vine stars. Right.

And they were like, produced and thought out on Instagram, it was just like raw partying, just straight partying all the time. And I get it. Like, there are different platforms. You tell different stories. But it's just a weird, it's a weird thing to know that one platform, which felt a certain way, incentivize one kind of thing. And Instagram incentivizes a whole other kind of thing.

Right. But I just, I wonder, like, the Snapchat moment, you know, that it appears are like headed towards an IPO. They're going to be the big company. A lot of people think they're like, they're going to be the future of television because all the kids are watching it all the time. I just wonder if their moment, if they don't iterate on the core product as fast as Instagram appears to be willing to iterate on their frankly clone of the core product. Like what's going to happen there?

I like the AR stuff that Snapchat just did where like with your rear camera, it kind of turned like converts the world into some trippy experience. I feel like there's more that could be done. I mean that could be kind of the gateway to some like an augmented reality that's not just siloed but somehow a shared social augmented reality. Yeah. Like Snapchat could conceivably within the next couple of years have an AR party where everybody can point their phone in the same direction and see the same thing from different angles and it's like some live concert or something like that. You know, at Snapchat, I really like that they keep on investing in these weird filters and stuff like that.

But yeah, maybe that's not as big as putting links in stories. Well, I don't know. You know, Snapchat thinks it's a camera company. That's their conception of their product. We are a camera company. And so now they have a physical camera. I think Snapchat should buy GoPro. Speaking of the GoPro generation, gopRO's failing. Their drones are literally falling out of the sky. That's like the real danger of like beta culture, right? Like we ship most things and they're half complete and they're a little buggy and we've got to wait for that software update. But the karma drone flies in the air. And like it should probably be done before you give it. That's my theory. I think it's a probably wild and somewhat stupid theory, but I think Snapchat should buy GoPro. And then, you know, do all the... What if Snapchat made a digital SLR?

Or sorry, Snap Inc. No? No? I don't know. I think the glasses are more interesting than that. I think that, like, they're interested in trying to, like, take the digital things that we use and change our, like, real world behavior. And we've talked about the, with the spectrum.

before that it's so fascinating how we seem to accept the spectacles when we rejected Google Glass. But like everything around that camera on your face is different than Google's camera on your face. From the company that makes it, how much you trust them, to the things that it does, to just like the way they look and the way you like generally feel about the company has like generated like a genuine like interest and enthusiasm for the thing that is wild. different than the interest that was generated for glass and more to the point like way less likely to have a backlash by the way brian bishop as of this recording like one person away from getting the spectacles very exciting but like do you so you don't think there's going to be like a i don't know spectaoles or whatever like like especially because they're making i felt like oh he got

yeah it's good it's real good like they're making it scarce and I felt like part of the Google Glass thing was that they were so expensive and rare that there was a bit of a class envy that kind of spilled over into just sort of a hatred of a type of person who would wear Google Glass. Is there going to be some sort of backlash against the type of person, not you, Brian Bishop, we love you, but who would wait in line to buy this at a vending machine that fell from the sky. It doesn't actually, it just looks like it. Because of the balloons. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a lot of those people. Here's my theory on why Glass was somewhat unacceptable in Snapchat spectacles.

One, Glass looked ridiculous. And all of Google's storytelling about how they'd hired all these fashion people and made, like, they just looked ridiculous. Snapchat, they just look like sunglasses, maybe a little thicker and people would be, it's cool. Second of all, the spectacles are like explicitly designed to be a camera for Snapchat. Which is a neat idea because people love Snapchat. So it's like fashionably cool single purpose gadget for a thing you love. Google Glass was way too ambitious, right? You're going to talk to it.

It's going to show you maps. It's going to. And then most of the time you had this huge thing on your face that did nothing. Just flat out, nothing. But looked like you were surveilling everybody. The day I spent wearing Google Glass at the Indy 500, which was an amazing day, ridiculous day. what most people ask me I swear to God

can you see through clothes straight up that's what everyone thought like that's the price like if you're going to pay the price of looking like an absolute nerd in these Google glasses the value that you need to get

for that price is like naked people all the time like that was the connection people made in their heads you can see through clothes of that thing and it was like Brian Bishop got him you got him yes he got him can you see through clothes with that thing I mean I literally walked around a racetrack

There's like race cars flying around me and people were tapping me on the shoulder. You see through clothes in that thing? And I was like, no, that would be awful. But I can look up a map of where I am, which is the N5500. And like, it was just too ambitious of a product. And it couldn't deliver on all that ambition. A lot of problems. And it looked insane.

But the, I think spectacles. The hatred of other people. It's one thing, like, it was inconvenient to have it on your face. But the way people treated and talked about people who, the other people who had it on their... Because the way Google talked about it, you know, Google talked about it with so much ambition. And the way that got filtered down to like the hype beasts was like, this is the future of computing. We will live in an augmented reality where Google will be speaking to me at all times. And like, this is, everything should be this.

And you're like tapping the side of your face and like there's a bad Bluetooth connection to your phone, which doesn't have service and nothing. But it was not a great product. I think it was that like hype level. I don't think there's any hype level. It's just camera and glasses. Everybody understands that. It's literally a vending machine and a parking lot with balloons above it, security guard next to it.

It looks like a minion. And you had to find out about it through surreptitious internet means. Yeah. I feel like they're trying for a hype level. Anyways, I'm fine with it. Whatever. But it's a different kind of hype. It's not Google hype level.

I want to try. Google hype level is like, this is the future. I hope you're right. I just don't want people to please people. Just don't be mean to people wearing spectacles. Congratulate them. Mug for a photo. Then look at their story later.

However it works. Here, I'll tell the listener, you want some inside baseball and what happened in the Virtuous just now? I think Nelai can see through my clothes. I was charging. My phone was about to die. So I took my lightning to USBA and I plugged it into my laptop, which quickly. Quickly drained my laptop battery and then my laptop died. It was, grinding this episode to a halt.

But we're back just in time to wrap up. So I'm glad we took a break from politics on this show. Like I said, I'm confident many political issues are going to come wafting through the show over the course of the next four years. But I'm glad it took a break. We're back next week. Hopefully by then we'll have MacBook Pro reviews. It's something that I'm eager to do and talk about in depth. I want to talk about that touch bar in depth.

There's all kinds of other stuff have next week. We took a little break from the world this week. There's so much other stuff to listen to. Like I said, if you wanted to get deep into politics, me and Walt and Control Walt Delete, that's out. It's actually a really fun episode with Walt. There's also a lot of policy stuff going up on the website. There's tons of policy stuff going up on the website.

I encourage everybody. I usually don't plug Ezra's show, but Ezra Klein, Matt Iglesias, and Sarah Cliff have a deep politics show called The Weeds, and they recorded an emergency podcast episode yesterday after the election and got deep into the policy specifics of what happened during the election. So check that out if you're all interested. I'm going to throw in another one. Listen to the On the Media podcast. I know it's not a Vox Media product,

but they recorded an emergency episode where they yelled at each other about the future of media. It was amazing. You should check it out. Yeah. So there's like there's a lot to listen to you. I'm glad that we could provide some respite on the show. But there's lots to listen to there. Chris Plan has What's Tech, which is wonderful. On the recode side, Lauren Good, notable verger, Lauren Good. It's too embarrassed to ask. Caras Switcher as Recode Decode and Peter Kafka has Recode Media. I'm sure Recode Media is about to get real interesting to as they dive into sort of this post-election season. And we'll be back next week.

But real quick, I want to thank Masterclass for sponsoring today's episode. Aaron Sarkin, not a heard of him. Sponsoring Masterclass episode and screenwriting contains 35 lessons over six hours of video, interactive assignments, the analyzed scenes from the West Wing. He leads of your group of students in rewriting the opening of episode 501. Class on demand, you take them whatever you want. You're in pace. You can rewatch them as any times as you like on any device for life.

So for an exclusive clip of Aaron discussing how you write the dialogue, go to masterclass.com slash Theverge. Got to watch it. It's so great. Masterclass.com slash the verge. That's it. We're back next week. Rock and roll. Paul. Paul. We didn't talk about Westworld.