The Vergecast - Good radio

Episode Date: March 26, 2015

It's another tech-filled week, but this one is just a little more British than usual. International visitor Tom Warren joins Nilay, Dieter, and Sam to discuss the release of the Samsung Galaxy S6, HTC One M9, Facebook's chat ambitions, and the release of Periscope. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to the Vergecast for the week of March 23rd, 2015. I'm Neil Patel. I'm Deidore. Oh, what a surprise. Our boy from across the pond. Was he to ruin everything? Despite the fact that he's across the table for me, I didn't see that coming. What a surprise.

Hey, who's in the hype check? Who's in the hype zone? Hey, I'm back from vacation. I'm also now her swagasy. Apparently, that's the thing that happened. Did you watch that episode, Sam? I had Helen and Hypeseat. I heard it was great, but I did not watch because 18T was throttling my data for the entire week.

Why? Because I went over five gigs. He sent too many mere cats from South by Southwest. I have never been more. Well, it was kind of nice because I got to like not be on Twitter all day, but I couldn't load Twitter, couldn't load Instagram, nothing. I was getting 0.5 down the entire trip versus the data came back the last day and I was getting 40 down.

Yeah, it was bad. But that's South by in general is terrible. No, Austin. Austin has really good LTE. Not on Verizon. They don't. Well, I have 18T. And yeah, everything is being throttled.

But I'm back and back in the hype seat. I got to say, Helen and the hype seat. I bet it was amazing. One of my favorite hashtags. Yeah. It was different. Well, she's a girl and I'm a boy. For one.

It was also like, I don't know, like Helen is like an ice cold professional. And what am I? Niles. A teen. You're his swangesty. Oh, thank you. All right. There's a lot of stuff talking about. A lot of stuff.

You've got gadgets upon the gadgets. Yeah, I got gadgets stacked on gadgets. So we reviewed the HTCM9. That you have in your hands. I have it in my hands if you're watching the live stream. And now Naila has it. We've got the two-tone version. God, this thing is so ugly.

It is not. It can't decide what bad color it wants to be. It's like your, grandparents' jewelry that you don't want. It's got this weird ridge around the front. It's trite. It's like the back is silver and then the ridge is this like rose gold. It's bust. And then the front is like like a, it's like rose gold that didn't do well in school.

You know, it didn't try. Like it's just like this is the rose gold that smoked wheat behind the bleachers. But essentially it's lost year's phone. Yeah, it's essentially last year. Okay. I mean, the only thing to talk about here besides the fact that it's slightly thicker is a little. It is easier. People complaining that the design hasn't changed.

I have no patience for you. The design has definitely changed. No, but it hasn't changed enough. I don't care. It looked fine last year. I think it looks fine now, even though I don't like the two-tone thing. I like HTC just holding it down with the IR blaster on top. Hey, there's an idea that works for everyone.

Samsung kept it, too, actually. Yeah, but I mean, Samsung having an unnecessary hardware feature, like, of course. Like, Samsung doesn't take anything out. But HDC, you know, they're like, we're making things. simpler and better. To me, the only interesting thing about that phone is that HTC has a new CEO. Right. So, no, like, here's the story.

HTC had one job with this phone. All right. I'm just going to keep holding it. And its one job was to make a camera that impressed us. That was good. Real talk. They went away from the ultra-pixel camera. They put that on the front, so the 4-Magipixel camera is on the front.

And they put a, I think it's a 20-Magixel camera on the back, just something massive. Yeah, 20-Magixel sensor on the back. and it's not good. It's not good. And that's it. Like, that's the story of the phone. It was like, HCC came back with like basically the same design with a few tweaks here and there.

Updated the processor. Basically the same screen. Perfectly good phone all the way around, very fast. And the front facing camera or the back camera is a bummer. They've been tweaking it nonstop. Wow, that's a really terrible photo. No, real time. I think the, dude, the front facing camera just,

like a better photo than the rear face. Yeah, it really does. I mean, this phone, you're right. They could have released the M8 with a better camera and people would have bought it. Yep, I would. No question. I mean, that's basically what that is. Yeah.

Well, no, it's a lot faster, right? Yeah, it's faster. They've done all the requisite upgrades. And they did some stuff to sense, like the software that's, you know, whatever. They simplified some stuff. The one, they made a widget for the home screen that's a full. that like suggests apps to you based on your location, which is like, oh yeah, I use Gmail at work more than I do at home.

But it also has like a, like here's other apps you should get, sell me stuff zone, which no, I don't want that on my home screen. That other thing's kind of like what Apple does with iOS when you're near, like you're near Starbucks and you get the suggested app on your lock screen. Yeah, it's like that, except it's just a folder on your home screen. And then it's like a folder inside the folder. It's like a smart folder that tells you. Yeah.

And I mean, there was a time when we would sit around talking about incremental updates to Android skins. Forever. For the whole show. Like, that's what we would do now. Yeah. But these changes aren't that big. Blinkfeet is basically the same. They, like, the thing that they, and also will get to this a minute, Samsung did, is, like, not screw up lollipop too much.

They backed off and let lollipop do more than work. That's at Google's behest as far as I can. That's important, because lollipops are a lot better in terms of UI. Yeah. And that's good. I mean, like, it's a good phone had a good camera. We'd all buy it. But isn't that, I mean, that's the story of this phone, right? It is

fundamentally disappointing because it takes bad photos. Oh, you can add extra little buttons to the navigation bar. Like, you can add a rotate lock button. It's kind of the story of Android, though, full stop. There's no, like, there's no device that you can buy that's got a good camera. Like a genuinely good camera. Oh, really?

Got it. You don't pick up the S6 now? I'm telling you, it's pretty good. It's got a... Where's the edge? Give me the edge. So there's the S6 and the edge. I prefer the S6.

We'll get into that. So you don't have a camera? I'm not going to hand it until you to know to launch camera. I don't know. Just double-click the home button. That's good. So if you guys don't know... No, it's fast.

It's really... That's not that fast. It's pretty fast. That doesn't happen. Very fast. So if you guys don't know, here's the news. Samsung, Galaxy S6 Edge. and S6 review units are out in the world.

Yep. And everyone can talk about them. And like, yeah, they're just like, go ahead. Pretty good. Like inside baseball, usually we get these. And we're told we, you know, there's like some long embargo before we can like do a review. Yeah. And Samson was like, no, here they are.

I don't know. Just no. So we have them. We can talk about them early, which is fun. Uh, reviews. Coming. Common. We shot, we spent three hours shooting a video in a really sweet location today.

Okay. You are totally wrong about that being fast. Click double clicking these time button. It's like it's weird and intermittent. It's weird and intermittent. Like sometimes it's like, whoop, super fast.

The camera is fast though. Yeah. But taking pictures like the shower is quicker, right? Yeah. And it does the burst mode thing. And it does the selfie thing where if it detects your face when it's with the front facing camera,

you can tap the heart rate monitor on the back and it'll snap the shutter. What am I supposed to do with the edge here? What is the purpose? So the edge is kind of pointless. And what is the purpose of the drop shadow on the clock? to be cool to look to like it's Samsung man give him something all right they scaled it way back they they took out 40% of Samsung weird according to them although you don't call it that so they got to

have something you know this is slow dude the s6 edge is kind of slow what where are you slow installed a bunch of garbage uh that is slow opening the app drawer is slow that's a slow that's a slow animation yeah that's busted so i've only had it for a day or two something's super weird there the hardware itself is really nice yeah The SX is a really. Let me see the SX. It's surprisingly nice. Well, you guys are like, by the way, getting real-time impressions of us, me playing

with this phone for the first time. That's the first Samsung though I would say. No, this is why we like to spend time with these phones. Before we do the review. We need to see what happens. And I've not seen it be this slow before. It's super weird. So what can you do with the edge?

When it's off, there's like this gesture that doesn't work very well to like pop up like a bit of like, it shows like weather and time. And then you can like scroll through to like a Yahoo headlop. line. One thing that's cool, you can set five favorites, and they each get a color. And when the thing is face down on a table, someone calls you it lights up in that color, and you can see it.

And then it does this insane bubble thing on the notification. There's like an orange line for your orange contact, and you can slide it over and see it. Weird. Yeah, when you have it face down, it does a thing. Yeah, yeah. That's cool. But honestly, like, the edge stuff, like, the software advantages to it, not worth the

$100 extra you pay for it. The only reason to get it is if you want a phone that's like, oh, the screen, that's cool. That's it. That's the reason to get it. It feels weird compared to the S6 as well. It just feels a little... It's way thinner at the sides.

Yeah, like it's tapering off too much or something. And so, wait, we've got pricing and specs. They're not specs. Pricing and release dates and carry. Yeah, so April 10th. Pre-orders start tomorrow, if you're listening to this on Thursday, the 26th. So they start the 27th. And pricing, I mean, first of all,

everybody's leading with their installment plan pricing now. So instead of like, oh, it's $199 on contract or it's $2.99 on contract, they don't tell you that. They tell you if you sign it for 18-N-T next, it's 24-17 a month or whatever that number is for 24 months. Or maybe it's 30 payments. Who knows? Hey, I signed up for next. I did it. Yeah.

I did it. I didn't want to. So you don't own your phone? I don't. I don't, man. AT&T owns this thing. And good riddens. Like at the end of whatever, I'll give it back to him.

Also, that is what I'm saying. I'm only saying it. it was too hard to just buy the phone. So now I'm just making peace with the horrible mistake AT&T forced me to make. When you buy a phone in the UK, what's the process like? What is it? Do you just buy the phone? Yeah, I mean, most of the time they're free.

And you just have a contract. Yeah, on contract. But you have like a higher amount of contracts. So say the iPhone 6, you'd probably pay 40 pounds, so roughly $70 a month for that. And then you get your data and all that plan involved. So it's the same. So it's pretty much. Wait, so it's free up front, but you're paying per month for the phone.

Yeah, right. So it's not free. You can, you can, like, contribute a bit to it, and then, like, up front, and then you get cheaper data plans. Let me just, why can't you just buy a phone? Right. So here's, I mean, you can. I got the pricing wrong.

But it's so hard. When we first put up the post, because it was 2284 per month on AT&T's next 24 plan. AT&T's next 24 plan consists of 30 monthly payments. Oh, yeah, that's true. That's true because they want to keep you just past your contract. It's like, call it the next 30 plan. Jerks? Because it's for two years.

Right? Like the, you're done, you own. No, no, no, no, you own the, no, it's 24. I know why it's 24. Okay. Because I looked, because I got suckered into buying the thing. Yeah. It's because it's 24 and that's when you can get a new phone and you just keep paying them whatever money per month.

But at 30, you own the phone. So at 24, they've paid 24 of 30 installments and you give 18T the phone back and you get a new phone. Okay. At 30, you own the phone. You own the phone. So they're just screwing you slightly. Okay. It's just a tiny little, like the bet you have to make is like if I just bought the phone at 24 months,

could I sell it and only have lost the six months of payments, the AT&T would... I already don't care. I'm just going to sign up for it. Right? It's like, you just look at it and you're like, I could care about this, but in two years, I'm just going to want a new phone. Yep. And like, do I want to deal with Gazelle?

Am I going to break it by then? Is it whatever? Like, what nonsense am I not thinking about that's going to happen to me two years or not? Or should I just let AT&T screaming? a little bit. By the way, do you like how we got... Yeah, we didn't do any of this. Yeah, it's whatever.

One to ten. It's like a four. Wow. Who the hell's going to buy that over the S6? Really. Okay. Hype check the S6. Nine right now, eight or nine.

It is, I am infatuated. What about the S6 edge? The screen is awesome. I've never like, I just, when I was Snapchating with Deeter this morning, I was just holding the phone and just looking at the edge and the way the screen curves, it's pretty impressive. We were Snapchatting and periscoping and Instagramming and Facebook videoing. Let me see the edge again.

All kinds of stuff. It's weird to have these phones. It's a fingerprint scanner, really good. It like, yeah, they finally done it really well. Dude, I got to say. They just copied Apple straight up. S6. I got to go regular S6.

Do it regular over the edge for sure. The edge is weird to hold. Yeah, but like you can't be, you can't be like, I'm really impressed by the screen. Too bad it makes the phone weird to hold. I think, I think. Tell the listeners is what happens to the wallpaper. What happened? Speaking of things they stole from Apple.

Oh, man. The wallpaper does a little perspective shift when you tilt the phone. Oh, I've seen that somewhere before. Where have I seen that? Where have I seen the bottom of the phone? Where have I seen this camera balls before? I want to know how you manage to make the app drawer pop up so slowly on these phones. I don't know, man.

I got powers, and the powers are that Android phones don't like. You break phones. Both of those phones are aware that what I really want is for a Nexus 5 with a great camera. Yeah. That's it. Although, so get into it. You've had it for a few hours, right? Like, we just got this thing.

Yeah. What's, uh, give me the quick camera impression. That's the only hang out. What camera impression is I'm, I'm modestly impressed. Like, I, um, it's, it's better than the stuff HEC put out, which isn't saying much. But Samsung's always been close or at the top of the camera heap among Android phones, and they at least maintain that here. Uh, low light is maybe a little aggressive at brightening.

Sharpening is maybe a little bit aggressive. Like, there is a bit more noise than you get with an iPhone. but like in low light shots, I was actually happier with what Samsung did than what Apple did, even though Apple's was maybe a little bit truer because the Samsung was just brighter. I think that the thing that Samsung managed to do here

is the thing that we've always praised the iPhone for. An iPhone, if you suck at photography, you can still take it out, get a shot, and be happy with it and good with it. And with most Android phones, you had to know a little bit about what you were doing to get a good photo, and they're closer than ever with this phone.

to being able to just take it out, take a picture and feel okay about it. Right. Which is, sad to say, kind of a huge lead forward. I feel like, didn't the X-3 have a decent? Yeah. I like the Z3. Yeah. Z3.

Sorry, X-3. Is it X-3? No, it's the Z-3. It's just a bad name. Yeah. And I don't know what battery life yet. It gets hot, but you never know with Android phones. The first 24 hours is always like disaster.

You never know. Yeah. Does it make, you know, plop-plop sounds? No, they cut that out. They got rid of a nature U.S. It doesn't do plop-plop by default. You can still turn it out. The three people are like, ah, I miss.

No, there's a bunch of stuff that, like, is still there, but just off by default, and you have to go hunting to find it. Really? Yeah. Where to get moved to? Just, like, buried in random settings. As long as I know, no one will consume it can find out. Yeah.

One of the things they did is they have this thing. They have this thing called S-Finder. What must it be like to be the Samsung program manager for this phone and be like, you know what? Leave the garbage in there, but bury it. Yeah, but then there's this thing in the drop down and like. What are your emotions like when you make that decision? And then it helps you, like, what's that random crap feature that I want? I don't know what it is.

It's called SFinder? Yeah, and it's like a local search for your phone. I'm outraged. This is outrage. But it helps you find those stupid settings. That's what you're hearing in my voice. I can't find guest mode. True outrage access S funder.

You pulled on the notification shape. So it's just always there waiting for you to fuck it up. Yep. Just always like, oh no, I enabled S-voice. They added theming to the stock launcher and all the themes are just hideous. They're hideous. Wait, the Samsung stock, the Touch-Wiz launcher? Touch-Witch Launcher has theming now.

And all the themes are just the worst. I just, I like went to their store to find, like, show me, give me the theme that makes this look normal and it doesn't exist. There's a thing that puts cute little cartoon space aliens all over your phone. Is there a version? Yeah. I mean, is there, do they have data that, tells the, like, that tells them that people need the crap? They must.

I think it's just a constant trying new crap. Yeah. They'll pull out the crap that didn't work and we're like, let's do some other crap. Actually, here's, here's. Craping. There's, and this is a T-Mobile version. There's a bunch of crap. Or, like, Lookout, mobile security was, like, popping up notifications.

T-Mobile has its own app that's popping up notifications nonstop. I get the feeling like, Samsung wants this to be a winner so badly. they let the carriers announce the price. They let carriers throw a bunch of software on here. I think they're letting the carriers do whatever they want with these phones to try and get them happy to sell them. Right. You can go to most best buys and AT&T and Verizon and wherever else, like tomorrow to go play with the phone. Right. Let me see this again.

Right? Yeah. Like two weeks ago we were like, oh, there's nothing to say it's boring. But now that we actually have it, like it's a good phone. If they release a Google Play edition of that phone, I'm going to have a hard time not buying it. Right. Exactly. Yeah, but isn't that true of every phone? There's not a phone where I say to myself, man, if they released a Google Play edition and they took out the crap and, you know, they did whatever little camera, like, low level stuff they need to do to make the camera work because that's really what they need to do.

Almost every phone, every flagship I would buy, except for the M9 because of cameras. People used to get excited about those Google Play editions, but they weren't, they still weren't great phones. This one seems a bit better. Actually, I gave my original HTC1 play edition to my friend because he had, he had a Nexus 4. Yeah. Kyle. He had a Nexus 4. It was just garbage.

And I was like, dude, like, just LTE. Like, it will change your life if you get LTE. So I gave him my, like, the Google Play Nexus 1. And he, like, it's still kind of mad at me about it. Because, so, like, whatever. He just upgraded to an iPhone. But, so you had this one for like two years. And AT&T wouldn't provision a SIM, an LTE SIM for it.

Oh, this was the HTC1. Yeah. Google. So he had to, like, fight. He had to fight an LTE SIM out of AT&T. And then all of his APNs were always broken. Yeah. Like, you just couldn't work.

I lived in that hell for a long time. Yeah, so he just, like, could not provision voice and data properly to this phone. If you want to live in a special circle of hell, try swapping sims between an Android phone and an iPhone and try and make sure that your tethering still works from device to device. That's one thing about the UK when you swap a seam, if I take my sim

and put in another phone, it just works. Yep. Right. That's how it's supposed to work. Because the UK carriers are regulated and they can't hijack the system. I can take it to someone else and that just works fine as well. Well, that sort of works here. Yeah, that's it is not. But anyway,

my buddy, like, still like, he's like, do you want this phone back? I'm like, no, like, it's really old. I don't need in old HDC1. He's like, I really don't want to have it anymore. The camera was broken.

All of his pictures were purple. The only thing he used his camera for was taking pictures of whiteboards in the office. And he's like, every whiteboard is purple. Like,

what is even the point of this? I don't know. Anyway, Google Play Edition's like, you're right. They are like, they're like unicorns. But they were excited

because Android at the time and the UI and stuff that people were doing just was really sucky. I had a great experience with that phone for five minutes. So everyone wanted it without blooper.

Right. It's, this is an excellent transition right into Windows. Ha! Oh, burn. Right. You want to. John, can we get at like a, a soundboard of Tom saying sick burn? That's really sick burn.

Sick burn. I love when Tom makes fun of his own accent because it's just like, it's so much. It's hard not to be in the room of them. How often do people ask you to do an American accent? Well, you're about to. So that'll be one. I don't know. Not often.

I'm not usually walking down a London street and someone's like, can you do an American accent? Does you do it talk? Do it talk. Do it. Do it an American accent. Do it. This is like totally cool. That is so bad.

What? Are you a teen? Do it again. Do it again. Do it again. This is totally cool being on the verge cast. That's how I'm. That's exactly what we sound like.

I think that you should do that accent for the rest of the show, and I'll do an English accent. Oh, my God. You know what I was going to do for this show? Talking to Mike's, I was going to, maybe I shouldn't say, but I was going to dress up as a Spartan. Whoa. All right, let's get into it. I got. And then just sit here with a spear and explore.

Here's here. Let's just talk about what the hell is going on with Internet Explorer and Spartan in Windows 10. Well, nothing's happening. Right. Everything is this. I will say right now at the highest levels of Microsoft. There are people mad at Tom Warren. Isn't that always the case?

Right at the top of Microsoft. The case. All right. Give us a backstory. Why is everybody mad at you? No one's mad at me. Okay. Why is no one mad at you?

One particular. Why are people mad at me? I don't know. So we wrote a story. It was like in Microsoft is killing off the internet explore brand. So two key points about our headline is killing off doesn't mean dead. Right. When you're killing off something,

It's a process. Yep. Second of all, the process of killing off by Tom Warren. We covered this in a little bit last week that they're, noted murder or Tom Warren, let not feed it. Here's how you kill something until it's dead. It's a slow process. Right.

You walk to the kitchen, you get the knife. Yeah. You examine the knife. And that process is the kidding off process. You get your gun. You just starve. You put bullets in the chamber. Yeah.

So since then, it has arisen that your story was 100% You figure out what they like to drink. Then you acquire some poison. Then you buy a bottle of their favorite drink. You put the poison in the drink. The life of Inan Eggs, bro. Then you ask them, Are you thirsty?

Then they drink the poison. Then you wait. Is this like that thing you have to do in high school that make you write instructions for how to make a peanut butter sandwich? And then they follow them exactly. Only it's how to murder a brand. Yeah, that's great. I'm sorry.

You get in your car Yeah, you get in your car How am I get in my car? You follow you open your front door How do I open my front door? Reach out and crash with the knob I'm sorry All right, go ahead

What? What? This is what you did? It's not that matter You get a brick Aim for the head That's not a process That's just like instinct

All right, go ahead That's like Where were we We're a process Of killing off an actual You're in the process Of kidding of something Right

It's not dead But obviously Mainstream media being mainstream media and everything else it kind of spiraled into the story of Internet Explorer is dead, which is not quite true. But essentially Microsoft is

like, I don't know, people disagree with me, but Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand as I see it and as everyone else sees it. And if Microsoft doesn't think that's the case, then... But you actually say it. Yeah. So, essentially, they're getting a new brand and a new name for

this successor to Internet Explorer, which is currently called Spun, Project Spartan. Right. And then they said internet, the news this week, the big news. The big news is that it's relegated to a legacy engine. Right.

In quotes. So Internet Explorer is now the legacy engine. It's the legacy. Yeah. So originally it was, there was going to be Internet Explorer and Project Spartan. They were both going to share the same edge rendering engine. And Internet Explorer still have Trident,

what they're calling the legacy engine now. But now they decided only Project Spartan is going to have this new edge. rendering engine and Explorer won't. So effectively, InnetSports is going to stay there for whoever needs to use it, so enterprises, businesses, and still use the Trondent rendering engine.

Right. So it's a legacy. But internet export, so it's done. Yeah, it seals its fate. Like, you're done. They're not going to put any... And they're definitely not going to call... They're not going to call... ...orfeatures into Internet Explorer. Yeah, and they're definitely not going to call Projectsport and Internet Explorer. Yeah, they're not going to call...

Like, they've announced they're finding a new name. If they were going to call it in the Explorer, they wouldn't have showed a slide that said where In The Explorer brand recognition was like at the bottom of the pile. That's what they showed on stage, you know, and they wouldn't be saying they're looking for a new brand and a new name. Right. So. As far as I know inside Microsoft, it's like a... What stage of the killing process are they?

Yeah, they're kind of like, there's, I don't know. I know Microsoft wants to be a whole one Microsoft thing at the moment, but there's still going to be disagreements as they are in any company. And In The Internet Explorer is one of them, right? Right. No, I just don't see why they won't admit it. It's like, it's a legacy engine. If you built your small business app on IE, which is the reason they won't just kill it out right, or your medium business. There's a lot of, what, rando, like, line of business apps that live in IE, right?

Yeah. But just tell those people, it'll be fine. And then build your apps for the other browser. I think the problem they had is that they don't have the new name ready for projects, but on, which they should really have by now. I mean, you'd think, yeah. Like, come on, guys, let's name this thing. Well, is this a result of them being over-transparent throughout the entire Windows 10 process?

Possibly, yeah. Because they're, like, they're very committed to be like, here's what we're doing, here's all of it, here's all the decisions. We don't know we're doing that, but we'll figure it out. And then, like, this is just starting to bite them, right? They're trying to get feedback on everything, et cetera. But I think it's like this, perhaps that executive shouldn't have said, well, shouldn't have said, you know,

we're going to have a new brand and a new name, because that obviously triggered a particular, conversation that they weren't really ready to have. So I guess the reaction for Microsoft is like, we've still got an explorer in Windows 10, and it's like, it's true, but like when you open up a PC later this year, it's not going to be pinned on the task bar. You're not going to find it in the start menu.

It's a system utility in the background somewhere. Right. And it'll be there because there are some apps that call it and all that sort of stuff. But for all intents purposes, Sparton. And even this week, they said Sparton is our future. So, yeah. It's like, maybe this is not as,

big of a deal to any like if you guys but like for us the amount of like they're not killing i.e. It's like they definitely are. And it's good for them. Yeah. It's like it's great like Microsoft needs to like dude like I'm the guy I thinks Microsoft should kill the Windows name. Like right they should just be done with it like all of the 90s are over. IE is done. Windows is done. Like here's the new stuff and it's like they they're just caught between we're dropping. We're dropping IE, we were renaming Project Spartan, but IE isn't really dead. And then all of our new apps across every device is called a Windows app, right? Like that was the other big use.

Yeah. So it walked me through that one. Yeah. So they, obviously, we've gone through a few years of this pain. We're still, there was a period where we complained about Metro and the Metro branding and them killing the Metro brand, losing Metro branding, every single Verge cast for like two years. Yeah, so it started essentially with Metro. So Metro is the design language for how all these apps look and feels.

It's not, you don't say a Metro app, but everyone did, and that's kind of how it went. This is more accurate to say Metro style app. Anyway, so it started with that, and then they also had this issue with the German grocery store chain or whatever it was. And they dropped that name, and then they started saying Windows 8 style, or modern apps, Windows 8 style apps, and it was a real disconnect between. It was Modern and then it was Windows Store apps for a while. Yeah, and if you looked at Microsoft.com, it would say something else. And it was all very confusing time. But it's still confusing.

It's still confusing, yeah. But then they got to the Windows 10 and they were like, oh, we're going to do universal apps that run across all, you know. Okay. So what do we call those? Now they're called Windows apps. Those are called Windows apps. But you can have an app that runs on Windows, but it's not a Windows app? No, you can have a.

But the answer that the answer could even conceive would be no is insanity. So you have a Windows app, which is this new. the Windows 8 style app essentially, the Metro apps, whatever you want to call them. Right. So what's Office for Desktop called?

Is that a Windows app? That's a Windows desktop app. So there's Windows apps and Windows desktop apps. Yeah. And Windows apps... Windows apps were only run on Windows 10 and onwards. Right. And Xbox.

And Windows apps can run full screen, but also, luckily, in Windows. Yeah. In Windows 10. So basically, they're the future of the Windows apps model. Right.

But obviously, they have to keep the digital apps around because they're still more powerful and there's still a lot of legacy there and etc etc um and those but there is yeah most people just call them windows apps anyways it's kind of like right um yeah but i guess it's more simplified it makes sense with the whole windows 10 rather than windows phone 10 or you know it kind of kind of makes sense so build is coming up yeah with their big developer event when is that uh end of april and what are we expecting uh so they're going to

I think they're going to focus on HoloLens, obviously the app story, the Windows app story. Probably more of the phone stuff, I'd guess by that point. The phone stuff seems a little bit behind the Windows 10 stuff. The Windows 10 on PC stuff. Yeah, well, when we went out to that event, it was like... They were kind of half-sharing. And even, like, the build that they released is pretty basic. Right.

Pretty buggy, which you'd expect anyway, but just pretty basic. so I did expect to see more of that I think it would be interesting to see if you see this sort of Android apps story emerge Does you report on that forever ago right? Yeah and I think it went It's gone through various phases

in its life sort of thing with short life So initially there was experiment with emulation and stuff and now they've got to the point where if you're a developer you could essentially create an app in their tools and then deploy it to a device

whether that's an Android device or a Windows device. And I think that's kind of the strategy that they're moving towards. So it doesn't really undermine their universal or Windows apps. The story is so confusing. It wouldn't undermine that by just janking all these Android apps. I don't know. Just that sentence is like it wouldn't undermine it by just throwing on some Android crap. Like that was how BlackBerry killed itself.

Yeah, I mean, that's what we're not going to do. It's 100% of BlackBerry. That was how Blackberry lit a fire on top of the grave that it had already jumped into. Wow. Like that's how you, that's how you kill your, your tech company. You want to, you make a bed on physical keyboards. That's my theory. I don't know.

I don't, I don't, I'm with theater on this one. Look, yeah, how many, how many physical keyboards in your life except for your laptop? Zero. Am I remote? Yeah. You're remote? For my TV. Yeah, that's fair.

What TV do you have? All remotes have physical TV or physical bodies. There's a little keyboards, though. Yeah, it's got buttons. Buttoned. Okay, that's not a keyboard. I tried. I keep a VIR in my desk.

I have a T-Barr method that slides open to reveal a keyboard. It is the jankiest jank in the entire. Like, it doesn't work with all of the apps. Because there's no, like, it's a cable walks. It's not like a computer, right? So all the apps are, like, different. Like, some of them are Flash and some of them are HTML5, and there's no, like, system layer that, like,

controls so all of the keyboards are different and so this remote just like does the craziest shit in like all of you still use your tvo yeah it's great wow it's awesome you're living in the past you know what you know here's what i know about myself uh here we go no here's what i know i am like going to be the last cable customer in america wow uh because cable television with like a tv is still an excellent experience. It's way better than Sling TV on an Xbox one, I will tell you that. Right. It's great. It's awesome. I get every channel.

We record a bunch of stuff. When I'm bored, I just look at what all of the movies on HBO for the next week are going to be and record 10 of them and then I have 10 movies to watch. It's cool. It's a cool experience. Everything else, dumpster fire. I'm like watching television. Great experience. I never ever watch live TV anymore,

apart from sport. Right. Apart from sport. Singular sport. Like sport is singular, but math is plural. I don't understand. It's not math. Yeah. Why isn't it sports?

I guess it probably is spools. It is sports. No, a bunch of, a bunch of, I refer to a sport. I would say sport. Do the American accent again. No. I was watching a sport on the television. Why are you just doing it?

You have an American. You're a New Yorker. No, no, no. Among the most American of American. I would say, I would say I'm a resident of New Jersey. Hype check English. accents? They're attractive. Objectively true. Okay, so

they're going to show some more HoloLens. They're maybe going to help us figure out what's going on with Windows 10 on phones. Yeah, and the Android app stuff, I don't think it's going to be Android apps on Windows 10. I think it's going to be Android run type. Help developers create an app that their APIs map better to Windows. Okay, that's fine.

Because they've got to get the tonnage. I mean, there's no way you don't make the, that's the BlackBray line. Remember, we need the app tonnage. Yeah, but what Microsoft, what Tom is saying is, instead of saying, put your Android app on our thing, like, oh, you're an Android developer? Turns out, you just need to, like, change this. And then all of a sudden it's a Windows app. Or you're an Android developer.

His, why don't you use our tools to make your Android apps? Right. And then why don't you use our tools to publish to the Windows store? Right. You can might as well just put it on our store too. I think that's probably going to be the track that they're going to. That's interesting. Yeah.

I mean, the Android, I'm not a developer, but from what I've heard, the Android developer tools aren't like great and the Windows tools are a little bit better so okay they could work out if they do it well there's a lot of gaps they need to plug but yeah i mean i just it's like i'm rooting for Microsoft in a really serious way like i want them to succeed i think they have really good ideas they're like they're humble in a way when we talk to them that is new it's like the company is not scared of talking about their mistakes or you know right or the direction they're going in which is cross platform but they just all of of these other little steps, they're still, like, indicative of the past mistakes.

Yeah, there was, there was a few. And it's just like, what, I just start over a little bit. Like, they would actually, I think they would do better if, like, you know, it sounds like they're going to just, like, leave Windows R-T and see you later, right? Like, yeah, Windows L-T, well, I mean, that's, that's been dead for a. Right, but it sounds like that's over and it's never coming back. But, like, they're still trying to figure out how to, how to make a hybrid two-in-one laptop, tab like yeah right like that's still a thing that they think about and like they're gonna crack it

it's like what if you just made a really great laptop and a really great tablet and you weren't constantly trying to shove these things together yeah and i think a lot of the oEMs are starting to step back from the two in one stuff right and they're creating like actually good laptops you were talking to me about the xps 13 right yeah the xps is a good example um HP's new specter yeah it's good like they're getting to the point where they're finally creating laptops the you know, like a bit more compelling than they have been in the past. Right. And it feels like they're just walking away from these crazy designs.

Like they're still doing a few, but I think a lot of that was, at the time of Windows 8, the promise for Microsoft was, you know, touch is the future. Touch panels are going to come down in price. We will pay you so much money for apps that download it from the Windows stock. There was a lot of promises made that didn't necessarily. Well, I mean, everybody's... When you say necessarily, there are a lot of promises that definitely didn't come from it. The only platform app platform that matters anymore anyway is Facebook Messenger.

Oh my God. Oh, we'll make the transition for one second, but I just want to like one more Microsoft thing. You know, they have that big list of screen sizes, right? Yeah. It's like all the way from like wearable devices to the television. I always, every time they do that, I want them to zoom out one more tick and show off like a billboard. And I just like, yo!

Yeah, we're in it. Windows. Well, they all like their own billboards. Right. But it's like embedded. Yeah. It's like literally Times Square is run by like one guy with an XP computer. But yeah, the stuff about like they're making a laptop is like, yeah, they're still doing the surface stuff.

Right. No, but I'm saying like it's just weird because so many of the screen size segments for them are they completely underinvested in or kind of don't matter. Right? So like their phones are like pretty under invested in right now. Like they're just not doing a lot with phones. tablets are confusing for everyone as far as I can tell nobody knows what they should really turn into and so it's like why not just like put your energy into the laptop

or put your energy into the product I think it's because it goes back to the whole OEM relationship is done they'd be treading on their toes majorly because the surface stuff kind of was trying to trigger that two in one stuff I think part of it was anyway I'd like to see them do a laptop Yeah. I mean, I just, I think them chasing native apps right at this second without the platforms that actually make native apps great is really confusing to me. Yeah.

Right? Like native apps work on a phone. They work great on a tablet. On my laptop, it's like I've, the only native app I have opened on this computer right now is Twitter. And Twitter is a terrible app. Wait, what else? No, that's not true. You have other native apps open in your computer. Well, I have Chrome. But then a native apps on Windows. Like, do you don't have messenger? You don't have Skype. You don't have a text editor or photo editor.

I do. Slack. Slack is not a native. Slack is a hybrid app. It's Slack. It's web cloud. The only, okay, so I open Skype just to add to my list.

The only native apps open on my computer right now are messages, Twitter, Skype. But we all get into a point where you went. Chrome doesn't count. So actually, the real question is, what native apps on your computer could not be replaced by a, web app or like not currently like you could you could do all those things on a crowbook yeah like the thing you can't do like why are we talking about chrome books oh my god i'm sorry

because this is the opportunity for microsoft like this is the thing like if they would recognize that what they need to do is like oh man spartan books not like that but like think about it but then about it spinovics tom is not buying it what do they call the spaceships in halo they have special i have like a i don't know i'm the big banshee is one of of them. Oh, by the race.

Those are the bad guys. You're in space and it's a ship. Okay. Okay. I don't know what they do with spaceships.

What if Facebook made laptops. Way worse segue. Completely worse segue. They made, I mean, they did, they did try to make a phone.

It was not a bad phone. It was not a bad phone. Miserable camera. You know what? That's it. The real story. This is how you. For HTC.

Remember the camera. Anyone remember the kin? Yeah, of course. I remember the kin. It's just, here's what I know. bad. I don't know.

It was cool. I have a new law of Android phones. A new, a new, Neely's theory of Android phones. Every Android phone from this, from, for the past year and into the future, will be first evaluated for its camera.

That is literally, I feel like that's already been happening. It should have been happening. Right. I'm coalescing what we all know into a law. You're just, you're saying it, putting into the universe.

Yeah. This is now a thing. Like Newton didn't invent gravity. He just pointed it out. Right. Right. So that now you're saying, like,

yeah, Android's gone to a point. reasons I don't use Android. Because I hate Isaac Newton. I think, Neil, I think that's an extremely valid point. Like, Android's gone to a point where it's good. Like, it works. It's very, the operating system is very well integrated with Google apps.

Yep. And now it's just who's going to be the first to make a good Android camera? Let me, I figure, let me restate it. Here it is. The only paragraph of an Android phone review you need to read is the camera. Hardware's fine. Yeah. The screens are good.

I mean, even the, this is still like a weird pentile Amelad screen on the SX, right? Oh, don't even start with me. But I hate that crap. Dude, it's got 577 pixels per inch. Yeah, I'm saying, it's fine. It's fine. Don't even start. I'm saying that they specraced ahead of the garbage, right?

Like, I can't see it anymore. This is the tech cast. Thank you. Welcome to the tech cast. The thing looks good. What? It was like when you used to take macro close-ups of the screen. Yeah.

That was the Eli's whole jam. People really cared about that. Yeah. I haven't innovated in a long time because that was the peak of my innovation. Someone pull quote that. I haven't innovated in a long time. Where did I innovate? I innovated by taking macro shots of screens and you're like, suck it, Motorola.

I used to get such angry emails from the droid PR team being like, they sent me another one when the first droid razor came out. I was like, this screen is garbage. Yeah, but that screen was legitimately garbage. The S6 screen is. No, the S6 is fine. I'm just still kind of mad. about the droid razor. Like four-year-old rage?

They sent me another one. It was a deep rage. They sent me another one. They're like, you're wrong. Like, we can prove it. I was like, how will you prove it? And they sent me another one. And this one's still garbage.

Anyway. There's only been a handful of times in my life when I've posted basically a second review just to tell the haters that they were wrong. The razor was one. And the first, some Samsung tablet. What? Uh, really? Yeah.

The Galaxy Note. Oh, yeah, the first Galaxy Note 12, 10. Yeah. And then he also, you also went on the, he was really laggy in the dual app stuff, right? I was so excited for that product. What was it? Some phone. You'll see some dual app.

A while ago. No, I remember you were like, this phone does not have multi-touch? Remember when, like, touchscreen phones were first becoming a thing? And you went on this tirade of proving everyone wrong. Was that like the Nexus one? It was, yeah, the Nexus one. Because remember they didn't have, what? didn't have multi-touch.

That was really a game. Deeter's just showing off like a feature of the S-6 that it's just not good. What is it? Is it the dual-el-up stuff? It's like he put an app in a window and now he's got Twitter in a window. You can split screen or you put apps in windows. It's pretty great. Why would you do that?

So you could put, Android is bad at letting YouTube run in the background. So you can put YouTube in a little window, minimize it and then have a YouTube music playing just as a little icon on your screen. But like when you're watching YouTube, don't you want to be watching in a full screen? No. Sometimes I don't want to. Sometimes you don't want to.

Listen the hot jams. Yeah. YouTube music, man. That's what the kids do is I like music on YouTube. Yeah. It's great. Yeah. But it's weird because what I really want to do, the reason I really like YouTube music is

because it lets you watch Vivo videos without ads. Yeah. But if you go to, if you just go to Vivo.com, you don't get the benefit of the no ads, which seems like they should definitely maybe talk to each other. I feel like a lot of teens and stuff use YouTube or VVo. True. Yeah. That's very true.

Because there's no subscription required. Yeah. Right. But you can get one. There's a reason why those songs have like 100 million. I'm saying if you subscribe to Google your YouTube music, you don't get the ads on YouTube, but on the Vivo videos. But then if you go to Vivo, you get the ads. Oh, I see what you're saying.

So annoying. All right. We should talk about Facebook. My desire to not talk about Facebook is, we should talk about them both. Look. We can do Facebook really. F8 developer conference. They have turned their messenger app into an app platform.

We'll see if any, you can plug a whole bunch of. other little apps into it, like, I don't know, front back maybe, or like the thing that makes gifts and it's cool. Giffing. We'll see if, you know, it takes online, if it becomes popular. I'm still waiting for the one true messaging cross-platform app that isn't completely owned by a same company, but whatever. I would switch to Messenger maybe because it seems like it's doing a better job at progressing

and adding features while still staying true to, like, being fast. It's got a little features. and like, well, I mean, what's app is still fast, but like, Hangouts is, like, getting really bad for me lately, like, super duper terrible. Yeah, Messenger's got a lot of new features now, but it doesn't feel bloated somehow. Messages doesn't work on Android, so I don't care. I'm going to say something controversial. None of this stuff is as a as as as as as as as as a one since messenger was in the early 2000s. I agree.

I so agree. None of it is good. Aim is still somehow the best messenger to ever be ever. That is the European American divide in Europe. It's MSN. It was MSN. Oh, yeah. No one used AIME.

Oh, man. Because I was reading. And then Yahoo, I forget where they were big. So I was reading this like terrible, Steve Jobs book. We'll do it next week because I'll put up an actual review. I don't like this book. But there's a whole scene in this book where he's like where the author, Brent Slender's friends with Steve Jobs. Right.

It's very clear that they are friends. and he's like, and at that period, Steve was back at Apple and he was working late every night, which I knew because I would log into my computer and open my I chat list, and I would see the green bubble next to his name. Wow. It's like, you were I chat friends with Steve Jobs. Wow. Two, I definitely miss having the list, the status list on my computer. Just like, who's online and who can I talk to you? You can kind of do it with Gchat.

A lot of people that's kind of no thing anymore. Everyone's always like that. Yeah, that's the thing. It's like the, but then you want like proper status indicators. and all that stuff. Still waiting for the universal. The universal away message. Where is it?

Like in the Hangouts? I don't know. Yeah. No, I've got this stupid hangouts. Like Google, you know what? The biggest problem with hangouts is that I have four Google accounts. Yep. So it just doesn't know who I am.

They've been promising to fix that for three years. No, but the Hangout app, you don't even have to fix like the back end structure. Just let me pick one. Yeah. Right. And tell me which one I'm messaging from. The answer is we need to bring LSCQ back so we can, we can movie a number. Dude.

And that's Samsung like crazy noises. I was all up at ICQ. I'm just saying. It's like, how is it that it's harder to instant message people? Let's just have a universal, everybody can join it, open IRC channel.

Yeah, I'll see. And that's all why. LRC still exists. It's never going to die. Adrian at Motherboard. Occasionally just opens up the hip chat channel

in the editorial and people just like come and hang out. It's like wild. Maybe we should just have a wide open. I don't know. I think one of the reasons that like Slack is popular is because it just shows you who's online.

Like most people don't have that experience anymore. I'm just going to a place and like it has, it does have status indicators. It does have green dots and crowds. There's just, there are way too many chat apps. I think that's what it is. Like back when I was fourth,

fifth, sixth grade, like all you had was AIM. That's it. And like no one even had phones. You just logged on your computer and you went on AIM. Now it's like, are you on Facebook?

Right. Are you on Twitter? Are you on GChat? By the way, it occurs to me right now that we have not discussed the news peg. for why we're talking about Chattahs right now.

Oh, well, yeah. They made Messenger into a thing that you can install apps on. Yeah, that's it. And then today's the Oculus. And today was Oculus, and the big story so far is John Abrash, Abrash, one of the guys from Oculus.

Basically, he went on stage, and he gave a speech from the Matrix and about how you don't know what's real and what isn't. And he said, everybody has to take whichever pill it is, it makes you go into the Matrix. Was it the Blue Pill? Damn it.

He's saying that no matter what you're going to go live in the VR world, you can't escape it. It's coming. Get ready. You don't get to try to opt out. The red pill is the painful truth of reality. Thanks, Wikipedia. Got you. I just want to say this Facebook thing.

No matter which pill you pick, we're all headed down the rabbit hole together as one. This Facebook thing to me is really interesting. It's quite obvious that Facebook knows what it's doing because it bought Instagram. It also bought WhatsApp. It also bought. Oculus. Like Zuckerberg knows that Facebook proper, maybe like doesn't even matter right now. And I think the steps that they're taking to sort of go like mobile first.

And they're like, they're effectively like gutting Facebook for what it is and like building it back together with different parts. And it's like happening right now. And the majority of Facebook users, I don't think we'll see this until one day they realize that, wow, I just spend all of my time and messenger and never look at the Facebook news feed anymore. Right. And that's my thought.

well no i think it we're there's a thing about tech conferences yeah like developer conferences in particular that's that out of context i mean they are like camp for the the company's biggest fans right like and so like you can go to a facebook developer conference or an apple developer conference or microsoft build or whatever and you come away being like this company is going to rule the world and all of the coverage out of f8 is like facebook's facebook's dominant they're crushing everyone and they're going to own the media. The New York Times will put their stuff natively into Facebook. No one can be saved from Facebook.

And like two weeks from now, they'll be like the Twitter developer conference and we'll have all those stories about Twitter. Yeah, it's like Facebook is doing well. They're executing, obviously, at a really high level. None of the apps they put out last time around, they tried to do this, did work. Like Facebook paper is garbage.

I wouldn't say it's garbage. It's a fine app, but like, when they separate all these apps out, like. The only apps they have that are, are truly successful are the ones they bought. Well, Messenger. Messengers. That's right.

The beluga or whatever, right? It's called beluga. Yeah. Messenger is a different beast then. Right. And it was part of Facebook and then they pulled it. Yeah. But that was a good strategic move.

Yeah. And it will make a lot more sense now, especially with the business stuff and that. Right. It's very clear that Facebook, oh, also this huge news with Facebook partnering with, like, media companies to do news inside Facebook. Oh, boy. Facebook realizes that, like, people aren't using Facebook the way they've always used Facebook, which is why they're going to be like, hey, you go on Facebook to, like, get your news, but you got to stay in Facebook.

And if you want to chat your friends, hop into the other app and do all this other crap with Messenger. Right. I think Facebook's one of those comedies. It just doesn't, like, it seems like they've cracked a certain thing that even if someone came along and tried to emulate it, like, it'd be almost impossible. What they cracked was being a social network at scale and not sucking. That's it. They hit the scale that you need to be dominant to be a player and then they don't suck. And Myspace did that, but then what did MySpace do?

It sucked. So as long as Facebook doesn't suck, they're going to be huge. But also in MySpace was, you could be anonymous. You could have these janky profiles. And this feels like everyone you know is always on it. Like when there's a story that breaks and someone's done something crazy in the world, you find them on Facebook, you find their social media on Facebook, occasionally do on Twitter. But most of the times they're on Facebook. It's like it's the directory.

I just can't see how having that power someone can replace that. That's an incredible amount of data. Yeah, I just, I don't know. I have such little fear of faith. I mean, I think it's particularly true because we obviously work in the media. and there's an incredible media fear of Facebook that everyone's traffic comes from Facebook and that's cool.

A lot of ours does, but not all of it. Yeah, it's like a lot of our traffic comes from our homepage. That's weird. Yeah. We have a weird little advantage over a lot of new places because we have a website. Back in a day, Google used to drive all the traffic. Right.

I mean, look, one of the reasons we decided to start the verge was because when we were at AOL, there was a huge emphasis on writing, against demand on Google. So you would like, and they're a huge company, demand media is a company that exists that is literally, it would scrape Google trends and then hire like freelancers

at like no money to write articles at low. And make videos too. Oh yeah, and then it was like a whole cottage industry of like gaming Google search and trends and whatever. And some of that still persists, right? Yeah, it does. That's great and fine. But it's no longer like

the foundation of companies. And now there's an entire set of companies that are all about like gaming social, right? Like there's, I don't know, Upworthy. Yeah. There's a million... A kid that was profiled in the New Yorker, was it? Yeah, there's...

Upworthy's like, like, they at least, like, they seem like a real company. But that one in the Newarker, there was a kid who's profiled New Yorker, and I don't know... Yeah, exactly, because you didn't click on one of the links to go to his website. Because I didn't even if you did, you'd read it to be gone. Some buzz hot hype trend, whatever the hell.

Buzzhothype.com. That's my new company. Yeah, and so now there's this wave of, like, garbage startup. that are like feeding media into the Facebook algorithm. And like every now and again, Google issues a search update and like kills some crap. And every now again, Facebook does the same thing. Facebook issues that and kill some crap.

And it's like none of that scares me because it's our job to figure out the next one. That's important. And so we pay attention to that. And it's our job to make stuff good enough that Facebook's crap filters don't ever hit us. It's one thing if you're just making stuff that is just like shock, you know, kind of like, oh my God, look at this thing. but like I like to think that, you know, we and a bunch of other websites are actually making good quality stuff that's worth reading. And it appears that Facebook realizes that too because a bunch of times, I think it was like once or twice in the last like two years. Facebook was like, hey, we're going to shut down all of those like kind of like crap meme sites that you see in your news feed.

And I think the future of Facebook is going to be news consumption. and I think it'll be interesting to see what they do to catch up with like Twitter's real-time thing because that's a lot of people say like yeah Twitter's good at breaking news and you know even I forget what event it was a few weeks ago but I drew I saw like what it was like on I think just Twitter versus Facebook versus one other thing and Facebook is always so behind so I think Facebook has the opportunity to shift into like a real way to consume news and It'll be interesting to see what happens. But I also don't use Facebook like a normal human does.

Yeah, I mean, you're a professional Facebooker. Well, I use Facebook because I have to for work. But otherwise, I wouldn't be on it because it's a terrible depressing. Just wait until you put you in an Oculus and you're just permanently in Facebook all the time. I kind of want to get, should I buy an Oculus? You can't? You should wait for the next prototype. Can you even get one right now?

Can you get TK2? I don't think you can. I mean, there's got to be one version of the DK2 is not. happy with it. Well, yeah, if you want to like buy it secondhand. Yeah, I'm sure you can find one. Just hit up Craigslist. I don't know.

I'm definitely the wrong person to ask. You should talk to Addie. You should talk to Scott because he has one. Yeah. Kellum. Yeah. And it's awesome. We should all, uh, we should all talk to other people that people on this podcast don't know.

Talk to Steve. Steve knows what's that. Good radio. Yeah. Rebecca. She definitely knows what's down. She's cool one. She's going on.

Susan. Susan's huge inoculus. I have nothing else to say. I mean, I have other things to say about Facebook, but I think that we're like devolving into like a self-referential media meta. Me naming, making up names and saying of people who are not yours. It's Facebook was he signed, Twitter was he signed, and now Periscope. You want to talk about Periscope for two minutes?

I want to talk about Periscope for two minutes. All right. So last week was Mirkat. Yep. Live streaming. Week and a half ago. Okay. This week is Periscope, which is Twitter's Mirat clone.

Yep. that got a huge amount of press. Is it a Mirkat clone if they started development first? I don't know. Sam, was your video, was your Periscope video better than Stearn's Periscope video? Stearns videos are on another level at which I cannot compete with. Look at this salad. I'm eating it.

Like, Joanna, you rock. Like, it's awesome. Straight to camera. Joanna. It was Joanna rocks and she knows. So, okay, so Mirkat was built in eight weeks. And the word on the street is that Periscope was built like over the course. course of a year. And I was at Southby on vacation last week. And like the two days before I left,

Mirkat, Mirat, Mirat, like exploded everywhere. So I Mirkat had a bunch from Southby and I really enjoyed it. It was really cool. The live messages like coming up on the screen is really cool. I felt that the UI of Mirkat was really cluttered, like super duper cluttered to the point where like it was just too much. And I've been waiting for Periscope to come out. I didn't believe it really existed until today when it actually came out. And then I downloaded it. And it is super nice, super well polished.

I like how you go to broadcast and it loads up the camera. When you do Mirkat, it's just like you click start broadcast and it's like, boom, you're live versus like where you can see kind of a preview. The UI is way cleaner in Periscope. they both need to fix the web client because I saw a bunch of people complaining. Oh, portrait, portrait, portrait. Like, you have to drag, you have to resize your browser window to make it portrait for it to work. Or you can just click and it expands.

Oh, you can do that. Okay, because Helen was like, oh, no, look, it looks fine. And there was like a tiny box in the middle of the screen. And also the nice thing about Periscope is that you don't need to sign into Twitter to use it. Also, you can put your stream up for 24 hours, which is like, that, completely kills Mirkat. Like nine times out of ten, you click a Mirkat and you're like, it's dead. It's dead, right?

And now Periscope, you can just go back and watch it even if the stream is over. But only on a phone, you can't go back and watch it on the desktop. Yes. That was like an incredible periscope dump. Yeah. You were just like, here's everything I know right now. I'm really bullish on these live streaming apps.

I'm really curious about the relationship of Meerkat and Periscope there. Because they're both trying to do the same thing. Yeah. One seems like it found out about the other. and kind of rush something out of the door. Yeah. To me,

to me, like looking from an outside, total speculation. That's just kind of what it looks like. I just, I feel bad for Mirkat because, like, they had this super momentous hype wave

and Southby and a lot, the talk, like, I was there. The talk. It was all anybody was talking about it. Yeah, it was the talk of Southby. It was Mirkat, Mirkat, like, imagine Periscope was at Southby,

but also like Periscope is here now and it's an official Twitter thing. Like, you've got Twitter's backbone with you. now. I'm like, yeah, Mirat just announced their $14 or $15 million in funding, but like once Twitter builds that into Twitter, maybe

in like six months from now, I don't know what's going to happen to Mirkat. I think it'll be like the underdog sort of like, you know, the little guy punching his way through, but, you know, you've got the platform, you know, Mirkat was riding on Twitter as a platform to like make it work,

but now Twitter has its own version of Mirkat. I think it's even just the most basic things that with Mirkat was the first time and launched it, I was just totally confused of what this thing was, like the actual app itself and how to use it and how to find people and streaming and that sort of stuff. It was just a yellow page. Yeah, exactly

what it is. Yeah. Whereas when I launched Periscope this morning, I was like there's immediately friends are streaming, people from around the world are streaming. It's like, yeah, and I'll just say the push experience. I read Casey's piece and I immediately turned off push notifications

because you get, it is out of control. This person's streaming, this person joined this person added you like that they need to really fine tune the notifications you know what i can't wait until we all have smart watches and and everything is buzzing just constantly buzzing that somebody's streaming live no my my my my my my game is no no push notifications on the iPhone besides for messaging apps like i don't use push notifications on twitter don't use push notifications wait i have a question yeah isn't periscope just another kind of messaging app And with that, the show is over.

Wow, he's periscoping right now. I didn't. A live scope? I didn't put it on Twitter because I didn't want to spam. How many concurrence do you have? I didn't put it on Twitter, so I only have four. Yeah, this is weird. Eight, eleven.

Look at that. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I don't know. Well, you know what? I've always was hoping that the future would bring us the ability to be a local news cameraman wherever you were. Yeah. And we're there now.

This is it. It's real. This is cool. I feel like it's big in a way because when people do these do stuff like Twitter and stuff, people have done these things years and advance in different ways, but then someone does it and nails it. And Periscope feels like they've nailed the live stream. Yes, right. Like there is. There are, I mean, imagine like the, the, you know.

I have 193 people watching me right now. Make, like, amazed faces. Imagine the, you know, like Occupy Wall Street or. Dieter has just turned into a teen blogger. Someone just wrote up the prettiest girl of all. He's literally, for everyone, Dieter is literally streaming a picture of his own face smiling at people sending him cartoon hearts.

That's what's happening. He's not streaming it. It's literally just his own face, the front face and camera. I want to, I'll stream that a six edge. I just want to talk about. And now he's doing a hands-on with a gadget. So gamification, and I'm not, I'm not going to get into this that deep right now. Corporate Sam wants to talk about gamification.

I'm not going to get that deep into this. I have so. many thoughts about gamification. Dieter has so many thoughts about how popular he is. Right now. I've never seen Dieter's smile like this. Oh, no, I'm down under a hundred and a hundred. Oh, now, see?

It's over. Okay. The chart beat of Dieter's heart is falling. All right. So when I was at South By, I like got kind of obsessed with Mirat and I, like, made it a thing to hit the leaderboard. And then I hit the leaderboard. And then I fell off the leaderboard.

And I was like, damn, that means I have to work for it again. But the gamification of Mirkat is kind of the leaderboard, but it's not, I think Periscopes's gamification with the like. So if you go to someone's profile, yes,

we will wrap as soon as I'm... Sorry, there's like a voice in my head, and I'm like, you get one more sentence by gamification. The fact that in your profile on Periscope shows the number of hearts you have in your profile is very telling.

And that's it. I mean, okay, that was a second sentence. That's what you were trying to say. Can we gamify having our podcast producer yell at us? We should. And whoever gets yelled at the most,

pictures of, pictures of knives. I'm going to start the gamification podcast. Please don't do that. Spend your time in other ways. I don't know. Like periscoping. Yeah,

periscoping yourself until you get a girlfriend. Like, whatever it is. Wow. Wow. Imagine that's how I get my next girlfriend. If she saw me on Periscope. That was a jolly good sick burn.

Oh, my God. It's time for this to be done. All right. That was it. Sam, you get three social networks to pimp. You should follow us on Instagram. We post like every single day now and there's really good pictures there. We are Instagram.com slash verge or just at Verge on Instagram.

Dieter's buzzing. You should find us on Snapchat. We are the real Verge on Snapchat. If you listen to this Vergecast right now, you will see S6 stuff. You'll see some other stuff, but you should just follow us on Snapchat. And you should also subscribe to our YouTube channel.

We are YouTube.com slash The Verge. Chris Ziegler is now periscopping us from outside the studio. It's like, I don't want this to exist. How many viewers do you have? All right. All right. Stop. Stop.

Everyone stop. I'm stopping the show. I have two. Everyone stop periscoping. Yeah. I have two things to say. One. Yes.

One. Go to iTunes. Find the Vergecast. Leave us a five-star review. Tell us what you would periscope in your wildest dreams. But give me the five. That's what I want. Second.

Rock and roll. Bye. Bye. Jesus.