The Vergecast - Google's sale of Motorola, the iPod's decline, and Daft Punk helmets

Episode Date: January 31, 2014

The Vergecast is a discussion of all things relevant and irreverent in the worlds of art, culture, science, technology, and anything else our hosts might deem interesting. On this week's episode, Joshua Topolsky, Nilay Patel, and Dieter Bohn talk about Google's attempt to sell Motorola to Lenovo, the declining sales of the iPod, and the obvious benefits of a Daft Punk helmet. Audio: Download MP3 (34.3 MB) Subscribe to the podcast (iTunes audio) Subscribe to the podcast (iTunes video) Subscribe to the podcast (RSS) Subscribe to the podcast (Video RSS) Video: Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

to the Vergecast for the week of January 27th, 2014. I'm Josh Topolski. I'm Neil I Patel. I'm Dieter Bone. And yes, that's right. You've entered the Bone Zone. Yeah. We've sold Ross Miller to Lenovo.

Ross Miller has been sold to Lenovo for far less than what we paid for him. But you know what? He's in a better place. Lenovo. A Lenovo factory. No, Deeter's here. And this is, of course, the Vergecast. We're discussed the week in all sorts of funky, exciting topics.

This week, plenty to talk about. So much one. Nazis. Notz. Google. Google Nazis. No, Google Nazis. It's amazing what you'll find.

Out of control maniac CEOs. Out of control CEOs. In control CEOs. Cool, collected CEOs. Yeah, cool, collected CEOs. What else? What are the other topics we have? Facebook did a thing.

Facebook. Nintendo did a thing. Nintendo. I want to start with the biggest use the week, which is... Robots. ABC is commissioned a show called a... Selfie. ABC has commissioned a show called

Selfie, which will feature, I don't know anything about the show. Can you tell us about it? I just literally close it. Is it a show based on Instagram? My immediate instinct to close that tab, kick 10? Hold on.

It's a show based on the experiences of Instagram users. Hold on. I'm making that up. I have no idea what it's about. I'm sorry, I just need to have a drink. I'm very thirsty. It's a show based on people who have faster internet

than I do. Yeah, exactly. We have a little bit of a problem here in the, by the way, I hope everybody could hear that. The comedy inspired by my fellow fair lady tells the story of a self-obsessed 20-something woman who is more concerned with likes than being liked.

I'm sorry, did you say My Fair Lady? Yep. Wow. After suffering a very public and humiliating breakup, she comes to a subject of a viral video and suddenly has more social media followers than she ever imagined, but for all the wrong reasons. Classic. She enlists the help of a marketing expert at a company to help repair her tarnished image.

This is the worst. That is some convoluted. That is some extremely contrived shit that I just heard. That show immediately goes from that concept, whatever that is, to like three attractive of people who are constantly stay in one apartment set telling each other jokes about what happened outside of you mean don't trust to be in apartment 23 exactly yeah um one of my favorite shows or uh happy endings rip don't trust the b is a really good show i know it's not you're crazy i watch and here's why there's only one reason the the startling return of uh to form of james fanerby now he's on a new show i know

with e from that that show yeah he's only show with nobody needs that nobody needs the beak of but uh the beak is back you know what i have no comment i have no comment on that but what i do do have comment on is I watch an episode of two broke girls Oh, the other day? Like, did you hate watch it? I mean, well, it was like kind of by accident. I've never seen a whole episode.

I've seen like a minute of it. Uh-huh. Like, holy, holy shit. Holy shit is that show like it's crazy bad. I want to know what this absolutely was. It's badly. It was like, no, it was like, it was like, I was watching TV. Why?

I can't go over there. I was watching TV. It wasn't an accident. I was watching TV, I was flipping, and then I just landed there, and I was like, oh, you know what? I've never really watched an episode of this. And then I left it on while I was, like, doing other stuff. And it was so bad, so first of it's, it's badly acted, it's badly written. It's super duper racist.

Like crazy. Like, every character is some, like, racist character. Like, there's, like, a little Asian guy who's a funny accent. And then there's, like, some woman who has, like, some weird Eastern European accent. And then there's, like, a Middle Eastern cook, and he's crazy. And there's, like, it's just super racist. Like, everybody's this weird caricature and horrible, just horrible, mean, not funny. There's definitely an article in The Guardian.

It's called Two Broke Girls, So Racist, it's Baffling. You know, it is, it is baffling. It is like, it's like a show from the, it's like a show from the, from like the early 80s sitcoms where, I mean, literally like every character is just an insane cartoon version. It only made 50 on Complexes list of the 50 most racist TV shows at all time. It's also the most popular show in America, like second most popular show in America or something. It's like the third most popular sitcom in America. Anyhow, unrelated to everything we're talking about. But we're talking about Don't Trust the B.

I mean, don't trust the B in Apartment 23 is probably like high art by comparison. It's got the beak, man. Okay. Anyhow. So let's talk about what's going on in the world. There's huge news in the world of technology. We have a lot of things talking about it. I don't even know where to start, but I think we should start at the obvious, which is Google.

Google. Google. Yesterday. Google sold Motorola to Lenovo. They're trying to. And how much they signed? 2.9 billion. So they bought Motorola for 12.5 billion.

And this is like immediately, now that I've said those two numbers, Android fanboys will begin tweeting at me, various versions of where, or somehow that means they made a profit. I'm sure there's a completely fine way to justify. There's zero way to justify. No, and I'm sure you can say like, well, the power. will in the long run be X, Y, and Z. We can get into it. We're going to get into it, but I think there's no,

I don't think there's a possibility that what would Google wanted to do was own Motorola for how many months? 21. Was own Motorola for 21 months and then sell them off immediately. Yeah. I don't think that was the plan. It's not the plan. You may be able to, to define or to extract some sort of victory from this if you, like, have a really creative way of thinking. Yeah.

But there's no possibility that they bought them and they were like, you know what we're going to do in like a year and a half, we're going to sell these guys off to Lenovo. Yeah. Because that'll look really good for us. It'll look like we totally know what we're doing. And they, you know, they moved Dennis Woodside, who was like a high ranking exec to be the CEO of Motorola. Yeah. He was allowed to recruit openly at Google. He brought over a lot of like really smart people.

He brought, uh, Regina Dugan, who was on the verge 50. She was like, she used to be the head of DARPA. Yeah. He brought her to, took her out of Google, brought her to Motorola to be like, Just be smart here and like help us make cool things. She did that project era, Project Aura, which is a modular film. Which they're apparently keeping it at Google. And it's crazy that Google's like, well, that didn't work, but that's cool.

Like you come back here and work for us again. She's taking your whole team back to Google. Yeah. Like this was a plan. Like they built a factory to manufacture phones in the United States. Like they were trying to succeed as Motorola. They were doing everything right except for cell phones. Yeah.

Well. I mean, that's all. This is awesome looking about. the way, like, yeah, I want, I do want the ARRA. I feel really bad for Pierce. Because yesterday, because they launched the wood phones yesterday, you can start buying them now. Yeah.

And this one is not so great. But I think we were just talking about, the bamboo plus white combination, Josh was saying the plastic is like the wrong. It just feels extra plastic, eight by comparison. To the awesome wood. But like, they just launched this and David had a cool little story with, like, great photos. Or like, how Motorola is baking wood phones?

And then, like, that happened to him on. I mean, it's actually, it's actually. And then this morning, he put up a Lenovo review. And I was like, oh, Pierce. Over two, buddy. It's actually really cool. Like, the wood thing is a great, you know, it's something really different than nobody's trying to do. I think it's interesting.

But, yeah. The motor, the motor, the motor X has been a failure. I mean, I don't think there's any other way to look at it. It sold the last numbers we saw of something like half a million. Yeah. Which is, which is garbage. I mean, how many iPhones? How many iPhones?

How many iPhones? 51 million? What was it? 51 million? Yeah. Like, listen, I mean, I don't expect Motorola to sell 51 million, but a couple of million? Yeah.

You know, 500,000 is... They didn't even need to sell that many for it to be a success. It's got no, listen, the phones that are... Look, I mean, Samsung is selling Android phones, at least in America. When I see people, here's the two... I do see occasionally people with droid, with Motorola droid devices. I've seen a handful of those. It's always a droid max.

I think Verizon, yeah. And it's the one differentiating feature I think we all like. It was a gigantic battery. I see the droid mini on the subway sometimes. I've seen it. I've seen it. Maybe it's like, you know, when you like want something, you see it everywhere. Yeah.

So I see notes everywhere and I see droid max. So that's what you want. I want a giant screen with a huge battery. I get it. I mean, I think, but I think that, I think that you see droids, that's sheer force of Verizon marketing. Yeah. I don't think I've ever seen a MotoX in public. I don't think I've ever seen a random person with a MotoX.

Yeah. They advertise it. They've advertised it everywhere aggressively. It clearly has not had much of an impact. act. You know what the missing opportunity of this was? It's great that you can go online and build one and customize it. But they actually needed to shade more towards that project era stuff.

Yeah. Where you could have bought like the frame and like put different backs on it. But this is, that's exactly what they did with the MotoG. But don't you feel like this is the start? But regular consumers clearly like, I mean, I wonder. I actually wonder if... Cases are like the biggest sellers.

Like the number one accessory for your phone is a case, right? The cases are big sellers, but it doesn't seem like, colored phones are making much of a dent. That's what's interesting. But I think the reason cases are really popular is because you can get rid of it and your phone still there. So you've made it, if you somehow integrated the phone with like,

it has a built-in case, you can change it, like make it different and customize it. Like you're tired of an orange phone today. Now you have a blue one. I think that's a good point. I think if it wasn't interchangeable like backing. That's actually one of the cool things about the S4 is that you can,

the back is essentially like the entirety of the back of the phone. Right. Once it meets the band. So it's just like the whole, you can just swap it out. The Moto G they got there. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. The whole, and even the rim. Well, that, the Moto G is like nasty. Is this the Moto G here that we're looking at? No, no, in the video. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you got to allow that. Yeah. But here's the thing. I, this is not, none of this is making an impact because they don't have the marketing budget. Right.

I mean, even with all the marketing they did, I mean, first of the marketing wasn't that good. It was like, hey, it was like, hey, it was like, we make a phone that you can get in different colors. That was the entirety of the marketing. of the marketing. They were exclusive to AT&T for a while, right? When was the last time AT&T got a phone as an exclusive and it went gangbusters?

Like, whenever a phone goes, it was the Galaxy S4 on 18? No, the iPhone. The S4 first came out, I think it was only available on the... Was it? It's always... That's the way you got to do it. That's the way you have to do it. They might have been like mildly staggered.

But this is like... They announced all the same time. This is like, here's the problem. The differentiating factor is you can customize, which I think it's really cool. but I think, you know, smaller screen battery is like, okay, not the greatest. Lower resolution display, not a great display. Camera is eh. Like, it's a mid-range phone.

I think a very good mid-range phone. I think an excellent choice. Like, still an excellent choice as a smartphone if you're a buyer, looking for a phone of this size. But, uh, I mean, I'm going to buy it. Like, now it's, maybe this is just like, this is just like sadness and a solacea. I'm going to buy the, I'm going to buy the, I'm going to buy the second. And I'll actually say, yeah.

And I'll actually say, yeah. And I, now after this, the only American phone is. the iPhone. You guys quoted this in your piece and the thing I said about it. Their software stuff was actually really good and innovative. I think really improved the experience. I just don't know

that it was ever... Well, so Ben and I pulled apart the timeline, right? Like, Google bought Motorola, and I have now been told this. Now that the smartphone patent wars are over and it's kind of like, it's at a low boil, and Apple and Samsung are just going to sue each other

on the side of the world for the rest of our lives. I mean, that's what's going to happen. It is what's happening. But it's, like, in terms of all of the big stuff that needed to shake out has shaken out, I've been told this over and over again, which is that Google bought Motorola to try to block the iPhone from, they wanted to stop iPhone sales in any way they could. How? Why?

Because at that time, Motorola had 24,000 patents, but most of those patents were on, like, radio technologies, right? They were on things like Wi-Fi and GSM and MPEG 4 and, like, standards, right? that's, Motorola was big in developing standards in their old company, the innovative company. And so it was unclear. Like the public policy was not shaken out whether if, if you contribute to the Wi-Fi standard and someone builds a phone with Wi-Fi, can you block their product from the market? And the answer, every court in the world, every court in the United States had heard it was, no, you can't.

Because you, by contributing to the standard and saying, use our stuff, you've already said you can use our stuff. And all you're going to argue at now is money. And if all you're going to argue about is money, you can't keep the products off the market because that reduces competition. That was the answer. It was the answer in Europe. It was the answer in the United States. Ed in court, it was the answer in the International Trade Commission in the United States.

And so Google, that answer wasn't shaken out. So Google made a $12 billion bet on let's try to block the iPhone. And when Apple can't sell the iPhone because we have the essential patents on Wi-Fi and GSM, they will have to negotiate an Android license with us. And if they had won that bet, this would have been brilliant. like just flat out brilliant I mean was it worth was it worth I mean do you honestly believe

they made a 12.5 billion dollar bet I do I do there had to be I've been told like it at this point the number of people and the type of people

who basically said they were trying to block the iPhone like that's Sergey Sergey Brent told me it wasn't it was it was some people like that so that's what they tried to do and they lost and whatever

and the patents like they're going to keep Motorola has 24,000 patents and patent applications. Google's going to keep most of them. 10,000, I think, are going to Lenovo because they're about manufacturing, so who cares. Right. But the patents are worthless.

Right. Like, they ended up being worthless. And so you can say when Google bought Motorola, they valued the patents at $5 billion. So they bought it for $12.5 billion. We can round up. Fine. The value $5.5 will round up. Patents worth $6 billion.

So they have $6 million of value left. They sold the KWox business for $2 billion. and they sold the manufacturer, the firmament business for $3 billion. Right. So there's still just, okay, fine, you lost a billion dollars. Which is nothing to Google.

Plus you lost another couple billion dollars in operating costs over the past few years. But like, you have a failing business. But what you really have. But when you paint that picture, it's not that bad. But it's right.

But the value of the patents is just, it's nothing, right? It's paper. Right. It's the value of paper. Well, they were valuable enough to cross license with Samsung. Yeah.

Unless there's a patent. We should get that. There's a patent. there that we somehow have like overlooked the value of a patent and this is like the this is why the steel blew up in Google's face the value of patent is not the technology that it describes right because obviously Samsung can just like make the technology and Apple can sue them like you violated like whatever the value of the patent is how much you can get from other people for it right because the all the patent is is the monopoly on the ability to make use and

sell something right okay so I can I have a patent on this phone you can't sell it if you want If you want to sell this phone, you've got to pay me. Right. Or I can keep you from selling it, and then I can get all the money from everybody else. Well, Google has no ability to get money from people for those points. Right. Right. That's the weird thing is... Even in the cases where Motorola tried to do it, they sued Microsoft. They want to block the Xbox 360.

If you want to sell them, you've got a license or MPAC patents for them. We want $4 billion. The court was like, no, you can have $1.7 million. What's weird about it is... A million. A million. What's weird about it is... it just feels like, you know, Google, I mean, even they're not even, they didn't even

really try to utilize the past. I mean, there's a couple, there's a couple, there's a couple, there are never going to sue people. Right. And they kind of, they kind of trap themselves where I get that they have the opportunity to do it and maybe to be more aggressive with it. But then you see like the court cases are, I mean, the court cases are Apple and Samsung. And Samsung is, we can say Samsung's a proxy, but the court case is not against Google.

And Samsung can't defend itself with Google's patents. Well, they kind of try. Remember Google signed over some to HTC, that they licensed for a dollar. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, HTC and Apple settled. Right. Nokia and Apple settled.

Remember, they were suing each other for a minute, too. And the funny thing is that the game is not about, like, consumers see it as, I think Android fans are looking at it going, like, this is about the stuff they made. And, like, this, you know, like, I think that people who are, who bought into the possibility of Motorola and Google creating some really awesome stuff together are like, this was supposed to be about that, like, what happened? And I think that, you know, it's so much not about the products anymore.

Yeah. This whole, the whole game right now of tablets and smartphones and, like, the devices we use every day isn't about, you know, there's really just no players. There's two players. There's Samsung and there's Apple, and everybody else is kind of just like pecking around for a couple of people here and there. Like, how many Nexus phones do you think they're selling? I'll bet it's fewer than the MotoX sells because they advertise them far less.

and they are ultimately more expensive when you buy them at a store, if you were going to buy them just like at face value, right, if you walked into a store versus going online. So I, like, the whole thing is like, what does Google do here in the sense of Apple sold a lot of phones? They make a lot of money selling phones. They, you know, they might not have sold as many phones as the street said they were going to, but they did very, very big numbers. They did a good job.

Right. And I don't think anybody Apple's too bummed about, you know, the 5C apparently was a bit of a miss. Five this. We're going to get into the earnings. Yeah. Yeah, well, we will talk about it. But I'm just saying, like, so who competes there? Google doesn't compete on hardware.

In order for Google to have, like, made the MotoX or a Motorola phone a success, it would have to compete on the same playing field that Samsung is competing in. And that's marketing. That's a ton of marketing money. And had they done that, that would have screwed up the relationship with all of their OEMs, I mean, this is, can you? I mean, I said somebody tweet this, they're like, they're like old Microsoft. And it really is they are now, they have now put themselves in terms of this stuff in a position that Microsoft was in not that long ago.

And as we can see with Microsoft, it has been a total cluster fuck trying to figure out how you make a product that competes directly with your partner. If I work for Nokia right now, I'd be like, well, we're screwed. It has never been done. Like Palm split itself into Palm One and Palm Source. Then they bought handspring and they combined again. That was a huge fail. The only way it will. tried to license macOS to the clone maker.

Steve Jobs came back and was like, this is stupid. The only way it works is if, is if for Microsoft as if no one else makes Windows phones. Yeah. And Microsoft proper doesn't make Windows phones. That Nokia is literally the only maker of Windows phones as a subsidiary of Microsoft. And they either collaborate on things like tablets. I mean, but at some point you start to go like, okay, but tablets,

your tablets are PCs. And so now you're competing with PC makers. And so if you lose those guys, you're totally. screwed because Microsoft cannot sell the amount of PCs that Lenovo does or that HP does or that these other part and they're all like meanwhile HP and Lenova are like hey Android's pretty interesting. Like hardware. It's about like the smartphone releasing phones now and yeah.

They're all over the like the Microsoft thing is like the parable for like or not the parable. It's the next version of this. Google is the parable for Microsoft. It's like Microsoft's trying to desperately turn to turn an app. Google's busily turning into like the old Wintel Microsoft. Yeah. And like we're just switching these roles. But I think so the parable for me is like if you're going to buy a phone company,

you need to desperately, desperately, desperately want to win. And if you can't put everything behind it, if you're going to tie one hand behind their back, you're going to fail. No, this is this is, this is palm. Palm and HP is exactly the situation. Microsoft and they bought a side kid. Here's the thing. Like you have to, right, you have to be all in.

And you also have to be willing to do something that maybe works against you in the short term. I mean, like, I think if Google said, hey, we're going to offer the open source components of Android as a basis for your platform, but if you want to use our apps, like, we will charge you because there was a story recently, which apparently was not the case, but they're charging licensing fees for the apps, if they had done some variation of that and said, we're going whole hog on hardware ourselves, and like, you can either be with us or against us. The licensing fee thing is like, you know, we checked around that story didn't check out, but we have known for a long time, and this goes to, you know,

to write into Samsung and why they sold Motorola. We've known for a long time that they restrict those apps unless you do what they say. That's true. And Google's even said it, but Google's even said it to us. I mean, the most famous story of that is, well, God, what was it? It's not the most famous story anymore.

Well, not anymore. Well, now the Samsung one is, but before it was, the Skyhook, they were going to be in the droid. And Andy Rubin called Sanjay John was like, you're not shipping the droid because you got this weird Wi-Fi in it. Right. And you're going to use our location.

services. Right. That's like, that's Google. But we also know that they, but sorry, go ahead. But to get like Gmail and maps and stuff on your phone, you've got to do what they say. There have to be certain requirements. To a certain point, but the question has always been who has the leverage in these relationships, Google or the manufacturer, and it's never clear. And so, like, the, the thing that we're leading up to talking about is that Google and Samsung signed like less than a week before this Motorola deal, a cross-licensing deal. And then there's a rumor. And I remember, and they announced it. And I remember Josh was like, is this important? And I was like, no, because I was, now in hindsight, it was ridiculous.

But it's like they're always in the same side. Like, of course they signed the deal. But like going from that to, I bet they're going to sell Motorola. No, you couldn't have made that. You couldn't have made that leave. But the other part of this is that there's a rumor that Samsung is going to de-Samsang eyes its Android phones and it's going to start promoting, you know, Google stuff more and it's not going to be so touch-d-y.

And that's based on the Maps app or something. Right. It's from John Gruber said that. So, yeah, the story, the story literally earlier this week. I mean, I wanted to just even earlier yesterday. Wait, based on what? So, uh, maps. So, Enafried at re-code.net, re-slash code.net.

No, there's no slash in the actual. When you say it out loud? You don't have to say slash. No. You just want to do it. Anyway, she had a story that was like, Samsung announced it's Tab Pro at CES. It's 12 inchery. And Google was like, cool.

And they saw it and they saw that weird Windows phone fake UI that they have called a magazine. Yeah. And they freaked out. They're like, okay, you're gone too far. You're going to come back in the fold. I assume Matias Duarte was like,

will anyone oversee my work? I mean, he's like, he's like, the fan of the authority. He's like, he's like, he's like,

wandering around, like, designing things, but nobody ever sees it because Samsung's like, losing things on time. I just got to tell you, I mean, but it's true, but here's the thing about it.

Like, it really, does that, that stuff really matters. And when you use, like, a Nexus device versus, Like the Sony I really like there's a couple things on it that it's still like sonified,

which is not that big of a deal. But on on Samsung devices, it's not just that the visual design and that the UI is like completely blown apart, which it is and bad. The guy was just messing around with the No3 for a few days. It's not just that, but they disconnect all of what is like native and natural to like the ecosystem of Google. And it's like,

yeah, it's like suddenly you're being asked to like be in a Samsung store for movies and a Samsung store for music and all this other crap. And it's like, listen, there's no way in how I'm going to use your Samsung services. Like, I have no faith in them and no interest in them. And so, like, but it does break the whole. Right. So the story was they saw this magazine stuff. They saw that, like, Samsung was even more breaking the UI and the paradigms.

Like turning into Windows. And they got them to agree that they would stop it. Well, that's the story. And I think that agreeing to stop it plus, like, you know, the concessions were, okay, fine, we'll stop it. But Google, you have to get. give us all of your patents. I mean, do you think the Motorola deal is part of that? And then that's it.

And it's like, well, and look, why, and if you're Google at that point. So Samsung's like, listen, we will, we will, we will commit to making a more holistic Google experience on our devices. Right. But we don't want to be competing against Google when it comes to hard way. Right. Right. And I think he's at Google.

So do you think, so. So, so does that fuel, does that have fuel? What's the right? What's the right? Which one is? I don't know. Which one is shit? Which one is got off the pot?

I think that doesn't apply in this situation at all. No, with regard to, like, believing in Motorola and, like, pushing it. But here's the question. I think we all have two different very different visuals. So does this mean, does this all fit with the narrative, the story that we've been hearing that everybody's rumoring now that they're going to kill the Nexus program? I don't believe that. Google's going to kill the Nexus program. I kind of make sense.

It's like, stop making, like, the Halo device because Samsung wants to make the Halo device. Stop trying to compete with us as a hardware maker because we want to be the least. leading hardware maker. And like we'll join, like, here's what Google needs, buying and lock. And I just had an argument of somebody on this, not an argument, but a conversation on Twitter about this. It's like, you need lock in. Like I was having a conversation about Apple and market share and people were like, hey,

they're doing fine. They made all this money. And it's like, yes, short term, they made all this money. Long term, that may be fine too. But like what Apple needs, what all these companies need is lock into their ecosystem. Right. Because like, once you buy, once you buy the subsidized device, like, then what? And what's the next?

next time. Right. And so, like, if you don't have that stuff, it becomes, your business becomes slightly less viable than it was, right? If you don't have the lock in. So then this is the question in between Google and Samsung, who has the power right now? Who's got more leverage? Because you've got the patent agreements.

You've got the UI thing. I think they have a real. And then you've got Google selling off more than a role. But if you, but if you, you asked me that question earlier. And I think it's, they both got themselves to a place where they agreed to do the same thing. Right. And what they agreed to do is let every other Android manufacturer go like, I don't know. And Sam, what are the other? Who are the other?

HECC. HECC. Failing. Sony. Sony. Sony. Sony's doing really well. How well are they doing? They're a third place or whatever. Second place.

Okay. So Sony, so then they'll have the same conversation with Sony. But then Sony and Sam's like going to have to duke it out. Right. I don't know how that. But here's the thing. Like, if you look at that classic wind-tel model, which is like kind of what I'm looking at now, right? By the way, Sony's making much better devices than Samsung at this moment.

Yeah. Like, if you put this phone up against the GS4, if that's its competition, it's a way better device. Sony's great at hardware, right? Yeah. Like, they have their classic Sony software problems, so they're great at hardware. Yeah, the software is the problem. They should just literally go stock Android. It's so close now that whatever.

But they can't actually, again, Sony can't because they want you to lock into their ecosystem. They have their little PlayStation mobile store. Yeah. They've got their video store. And that's like a handful of apps. Like, if Sony should basically get in between all kinds of experiences. That would be pretty good. Yeah, but they're, I mean, I'm more.

forgiving of Sony saying that you should come to our movie service because they own a movie studio, right? Like, they own Sony music. Like, do you know the best way to get access to like Taylor Swift songs is is buy it directly from Sony? Like, isn't that what you want? And like in the end? Maybe. Who cares who you buy it from? But do you want to buy it from?

Like, Sony is like Sony is the creator of a lot of these things. But I think that's Sony's, but I think that's actually Sony's problem is that they think that that is more meaningful than it is. Like, what you're saying, I hear what you're saying, but the truth is like, I don't care where I buy my music from as long as I can continue using the service and I know that they're reputable and reliable and they have the shit that I want okay even on those metrics though like I trust Google to stick around I trust Sony to stick around because they've been in that business I trust Sony less than Google to stick around that if I had a coin but like that's like

shades Samsung is like well maybe this business will work for you and you're like no I don't no I don't buy Samsung as a media wait the in selling music on their phone oh no no no no I think selling media like I'm not going no I don't think I don't think I don't I don't trust or desire Samsung for like media or services. Right. They may trust Sony either because Sony's going to give preference to their stuff and not to everybody else's. That is what Sony's like being, they just have the brand weight to do that. I think what Eli's saying is like they're at least like a trusted longstanding brand that has like done.

You know, the PlayStation and Sony music and all these things like have existed for a while. And they're so, you know, it's like the equivalent of. of Apple's iTunes ecosystem. I'm not saying like Sony like they blew their opportunity to own the music space. But I think they absolutely blew it. And now they're like struggling back. But like I'm saying in terms of you're right,

in terms of their hardware, they've always been superior. In terms of their software, Sony classically is like falling behind. And what if I'm, if all they did was they gave you stock Android and they added in the PlayStation store and a better camera app.

Yeah. I'd like, you know, that's, that would be great. But people don't, but that's the problem is in what Sony, what Sony hopes and believes and I think recognizes as relatively

true is that people don't, average consumers probably are more comfortable with the Sony music store than Google Play music because they don't know about it. Like they don't know it, but Sony you go like, oh, it's Sony, you know, that's the problem because they're going to keep... Google Play Music, Google Play

Anything, worst branding ever. It's awful. It's not the worst ever, but it's not great. How can you add? Yeah, the new ads are great. Play everything or whatever? Grammys. Yeah, yeah. They've been pushing it harder. But that's the thing, like, so you still have like What do you do with Android here?

You've got this open thing that anybody can use. I'd say since Sundar has been in charge, what you've been seeing is the gradual, like, exertion of control. Yeah. And they've got, so Andrew's open, like it's everywhere.

But like, if you actually want to compete against Apple, who is, like you said, just sit in there selling phones. Yeah. You've got to figure out. And services. And services.

Not, you know. And cohesive services that nobody's questioning. You're not, you don't buy an Apple phone and go, like, what will I use to download my music? Right. You either like, if you don't subscribe to a streaming.

daily problem. If you don't subscribe to a streaming service, which most people don't at this point, you are literally still buying with no problem albums from iTunes, and that just feels like a totally natural, enjoyable experience. App Store is the same way. You know, the Ibook store, I don't think that's made quite the impact, but it's there if you want it. I mean, Google doesn't have that level of security and safety yet in their services.

I mean, they do in their services like Gmail, but not in their retail services. Although Gmail did have a bug where you pushed the button and did stuff to your other email. Yeah, but that's pretty rare. Yeah, that's pretty rare. I mean, I'll take that over just having to use Apple Mail any day. Yeah. This is the worst mail.

I can't believe people use, like, a mail client like that every day. It seems crazy to me. Yeah. You don't want to get scruggled. It blows my mind. Yeah, I don't care about, I don't, you can scruple me, actually. Like, here's the deal. Here we go.

Breaking News, Google Financials, the call is happening right now. Oh. Motorola itself lost $384 million. So their losses were increasing. That didn't work. And then Google overall made $3.9 billion in profit. They made one Motorola in profit. $3.9 billion in profit overall.

Overall, up from $3.3 billion. What was that? What was Aviled profit this quarter? I don't remember. Can we pull that up? And the revenue was up to $15. So Google's doing fine. But Motorola was doing terribly.

Google's doing okay. I think the question is, what does Google do in the future? But, you know, here's what I see. It was record revenue for Apple. Profits were 13.1 billion. Billion. 13.1 billion. With the B.

They have a lot more to sell than Google does, frankly. And their margins are really great. Here's the thing that there's a real mess going on. Like, things have not gotten any more organized. They've gotten mess here at what? Apple scale, like, you know, you don't think about, I always think of these companies being about the same size. but their scale is just ridiculous.

Like Apple did $57.6 billion in revenue. Google total did $15. Yeah. That's crazy to me. And the thing that's crazy about it is like we've just become like anesthetized to it because every court is like, oh, record profits, record revenues for Apple. And like it just keeps getting bigger. They're huge.

Like there's only like you look at the top 10. So we can just go right. We're doing earnings. We can run through Google earnings. Well, I mean, Google's earnings are happening live. We can talk about Apple because they're happening. But they happen.

So the big, there are two big stories, I think, out of the financial. So they sold a lot of iPad airs, which I think they deserve to. It's a great product. iOS 7 is like, actually Gruber had a line today where he was like iOS 7 is the least playful. And I think that's, like, crystallizes the problems with it. The least playful? Like, all by the least playful, do you mean most crashy? It's super crassie.

But it's not like a fun operating system. Like it's very like, it's very utilitarian. And they just, they just took it back too far. And like all the blurring and the swoopiness, it's like, there's something about it where they just, the pendulum swung too much. But regardless of that, I like really like using the iPad, much more than my old iPad.

So they sold a lot of iPads and sold a lot of iPhones. The big story was Tim Cook dancing around the fact that the ViveC has not sold very well. Yeah. He was like, it makes it stronger to the five. 5S. We didn't expect people to be as interested in the 5S. The percentages weren't what we expected them to be. So he never said it's sold poorly. And then this crazy thing where he's like, you know, they just really love the touch ID sensor. That's like, dude, that's not why. That's like definitely

not why. Also, the touch ID sensor is terrible and worked really badly. Like, I hear so many mixed messages on this. I love it. I find that like it's almost 90% of the time when using it does not get the correct read. And I end up having to put my pass. I mean, I've been, I've been using a 5 for a while now and I need to make my own call in this touch ID thing because I'm hearing lots of people say it's just very minor though like it doesn't it really doesn't save that much time I mean you're literally talking about the difference if it means I don't have to plug in my iTunes password and I download it that's actually the biggest that's the best part so there's that in the other change the way they they could just say put your password in and like every seven days we'll recheck like not every time you buy something yeah well you want to anyway I guess if you're annoying horrible kids have managed to unlock your device and are buying things on it maybe just get them their own phone Here's your own stupid phone You horrible bastard Take this So the other piece was he said

Regarding touch ID We have you know That's one of the mobile payments Is a reason we're like looking at We built this thing So he hinted at that He hinted again Very very like

It's funny how much more explicit The we're gonna have new product category So Gene Munster It was the response to Munster So Monster goes look you know Like sound all sad He's like you know I just want to make sure

Like every, you've been saying you're going to have new products in 2014. Is that still true? And Timco was like, yes, absolutely. You just heard the glee. Yeah, I mean, absolutely like new. They're going to, Apple's going to do a new product category. They're going to have an eyewatch. That's every the consensus is.

They're going to do. Well, it's got to be a sapphire factory. Yeah, he said they built a sapphire factory. The Sapphire factory is going to be a big deal. Yeah. And then there's rumors about the Apple TV. The Apple TV became its own product listing on the store. Yep. And then we ran a story.

The iPod sales have just collapsed. they're gone. Yeah. And that's fine. The iPod is like, let's be clear. The age of the iPod, this is our, the age of the iPod is over. The time of the iPod where it ruled was, which is like 15 years or something. How long has the iPod been around 2001?

Yeah. It's when it came out? So not quite 15 years, but a long time. Oh, wait. What year is it? 2014? Yeah. Whatever.

Pretty close. It's over 2001. It's pretty notable. Like iPod sales on a pretty steady decline. Tim Cook even. said, we know they've been slowing for a while. It's almost completely cannibalized now by their other products. I mean, basically everybody is getting a smartphone.

Yep. Lots of people are getting, or an iPad, lots of people are getting either one of them. They both do the same job. I mean, the iPod obviously lives on as a piece of software. You know, it's the music software inside. It is, but remarkable how many iPods I see on the subway still. Yeah. Well, no, there's a lot of legacy.

I mean, people own these devices and you can use them for years. but the moment where the iPod was this sort of defining device is over. And I think it wouldn't be surprising in the next couple of years to see them, you know, discontinue or severely limit what they're making as far as iPods get. I have a weird, crazy, well, there's like a sadness there to me for that because the iPod was defined wholly by music. And it came at a, I don't know, just a period in my life. And I think a lot of our generation's lives where it was I listened to a lot of music. Yeah. And it was like, this stuff is on my iPod.

It's always here. I don't have to connect to like a cell network to listen to it. I think it's arguable. It's saved. It saved music industry. Like iTunes's the iPod. Like they did that thing. And not only that, but gave it a whole different, you know, gave independent artists a whole different life.

Gave. Oh, man, the original, the original commercial. Oh, this is the first commercial? It's crazy. It's so ridiculous. I mean, this dude just is rocking. He can't stop rocking. And then he got a fireware.

Yeah. It's like a commercial. So weird. Like that thing that he just did doesn't happen. His head, his head swing right there. Oh, God. Oh, no, stop that.

Hey, the 90s. This is basically the 90s. Yeah. I mean, those pants? Like, what are you doing?

Is this the dude from house? No, what? No, it's not. But it looks a lot like, no, this is the,

this guy cannot leave his house. He's rocking so hard. Do you understand? This is the last work this actor ever did. And you know what it's iconic. The shit's on his real. It's all over. It is. I mean, this was the first one.

They were so proud of themselves. They should go back. I was in this. So, you know, I were just joking. It's like every morning I wake up and I try to figure out what music service I'm going to use. And like all my playlists are at 50 different places. And nothing is as feels as contained and as smart. It was like somebody, I think it's very much like the iPhone where somebody finally was like, oh, you have the answer.

Like everybody's been trying to get at this. We knew it was going to happen. It seemed like it had to happen. And you finally just gave us like this complete answer to the question. and now it's the same way with everything else. Yeah. You know, it's kind of a confused landscape. It's that you're not sure where you're going to land.

I was just talking about this to somebody, you know, the idea that when records were at their, at the top of their game, when everybody's buying vinyl, nobody was sitting around going like, what'll the next thing be? They were like, records are awesome, like, period. This is the music industry. When cassettes came along and started gaining popularity, I'm sure people were like, I mean, the A track was in there a little bit, but people were probably like, what, do I want this? This is crazy. You know, CDs, I remember, it took forever for CD adoption to become a thing, you know.

And this is now, it's different because it's not about formats necessarily. It's really about quality. Yeah, I mean, it's about you have a million different ways to listen to music now, a million different ways that you can take something with you, like what type of thing you take. It's commodified, too. It's, I have a million different ways to listen to the same song about the same quality. Right. Yeah.

Right. Like if I want to listen. There won't be another, there's not going to be another huge shift. I think quality may get better. storage, you know, or lack of thereof, you know, networks may get better. Yeah, but quality gets better on a service like Spotify, quality gets better for you all at once. But now there's so much. We're upgrading our streaming quality.

There's something about the effort of organizing your music and moving it around. They connects you to it. That connects you to it. And with the services, it's there, it's not whatever. That's why I think Ardeo had the best idea. But then again, we might just be old. Yeah. You know, kids these days, they just put on Spotify, on shuffle or whatever.

Yeah. You know, they get on their hoverboards and put their invisibility cloak on and fly off into it on to go. To the club. To the club. To the club. They go. They fly up to the club on the moon. Wow.

Where there's a huge concert. We can wrap up Google. I don't know what that means. Yeah, what's that what happened with Google? So they beat their estimates. They beat the street. Beat the street. Well, no.

It missed them. But they missed the street. They missed the streets, but the stock went up. That's what happened. Great. So he wasn't that upset. Street was happy with them. Let me see what Twitter says about this.

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. We should move on. I think that's enough Apple and Google for today. I'm tired of talking about them. I hate them. What's next? I reviewed the pebble.

It's on my wrist. It's right here. I thought you were going to lend that to me. What happened? I'm waiting for mine to get here. You played it? Dieter said, yeah, I've seen it. I play with it at CS.

I'm like, get that away from now. You want to touch it. Look, I really like it. I still don't really want to wear it. But as a smartwatches go, if you really have like a hankering for a smart watch, like I wouldn't buy another one besides this. Yeah, no, that's a good. that I would buy.

I mean, it looks like a watch. So do you read the conclusion of my review where I, this is the first Palm Pilot? No, no, Palm V. Palm V. Palm 5. This is a Palm 5. Which actually industrial design-wise has a lot in common with it. Yeah.

Because it was like, it was metal. Remember it had like a metal housing, right? And it was like a graphite color. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Maybe they had in different colors. I think the Palm 5 in terms of design, it was a little bit better than this. Yeah.

Well, this is, this is the first one I would wear. It's a, it's a decent looking watch. It's, I don't wear watches that look like. that. Right. I have been trying out the Fitbit force, however, which is actually also functions as a digital watch. Yeah. But you got to hit the button though. You have to hit the button. I don't know why they don't just make it like a motion sensor thing. Right. They have motion sensors. Why don't know? It should be like a certain kind of like if I really snap. I don't know. I really snap. Just do this. That's a big LCD. Like Casio. Just an LCD like that is just

always on. You can download one for that. No, I meant for the the Fitbit. Why they have this? Why would they do that. This is a very... Because then you don't have to hit a button or do motion. It's just there. Oh, you mean an additional secondary display,

an LCD display. I don't know about a second one. I think you're kind of dreaming. I think that's a weird, bad idea. I think what you just suggested is... For the longest time, like Lexuses had that clock still on them.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. You'd get one of a... It has like Lexus. With the two buttons. Like, it's like, dude, that's an eight-cent clock. Like, it's a Lexx,

like, don't do that again. You want to look luxurious. What the hell? It's better than having to hit a button. Oh, yeah. Well, a lot of the luxury cars have analog clock is one thing, but Alexis would like have a digital clock. I don't know, but fancy. They're like, they are also eight cents, but they're, yeah, they have like a hand on them.

It's like you're an old guy now. You're old guy clock. But I think, I think this, I think your review is fair. I think I, I talk to a bunch of people like I just think if Apple, like people ever be showing this concept of the eye watch, which actually, why you did a really nice. On one of their covers recently, they did a mock up of an eye watch, which was, which had like a leather, app and was sort of like had rose gold on it and was like actually kind of cool like it looked like this weird blend of mod that's actually what i like about the moto x with the woodback's it's a weird blend of like modern and retro yeah um until you see the front if apple does well but if apple

does this uh i watch that everybody's talking about i mean pebble is just their business is finished like they can just they're done that's why they don't have the money their search history in this computer and you lie this is not parade of fail so I only use this account on this computer when we do the purgecast. My search history is like two broke girls, the word racist spelled wrong, neck neutrality, fake chart, and brave new world sequel. Sounds right to me. I have no idea. I remember all of that.

I remember when all that happened. What the hell is it happened? Oh, I was going to say, like, you know, Pabble just isn't in the manufacturing, the designers, the software people to compete with Apple. And nobody does. And as we've seen, Samsung doesn't. I mean, at least as far as watches are concerned, like they can sell a bunch of of phones. I mean, there's reasons for that that are beyond design and manufacturing. Right. Here's the thing. The thing that makes the pebble good is like, yeah, okay, it's reasonably

designed now. The first pebble was also good. I think, in retrospect, the design didn't age even a year or well. And it's got a bad display. Like, it's kind of a little too good. Yeah. Everybody likes, everybody's okay with the display except for me. I think it's terrible. Well, I think it's too. If they could just make it black and white instead of this weird blue, I'd be happy. But the software doesn't try to do a lot. and that's the whole game, right? Like, I just want this to tell me what my phone is doing. Right.

Right. Or like now, and now you can send minor data to your phone. So I wonder if that's going to be the, I've thought a lot about this when thinking about Apple's potential product. Will that be the track they take where it's like this does a couple of things? Like, you know, they're kind of notorious for making limited, the versions, first versions of things very limited. I mean, I feel like if an I watch were to come out and it was like, we have an app store. for it and it does it can you know there's games you can play on and there's all this stuff i think would be a big mess i feel like they're going to do a thing that's like a really good watch yeah

some fitness tracking stuff yeah they'll do that and like we'll get notifications from your phone and show it to you on you know there's all these rumors that they're hiring all these censor people to do like even better fitness tracking yeah yeah so like yeah they'll do that stuff i think for my theory is that they'll they will make it be able to connect to apps on your phone but because they're apple and they have total platform control they will get to say something like, well, if you want to update your app for iOS 8, you've got to put in an eyewatch screen. Right. And like they can just do that.

Right. The same way that right now they're saying, if you want to update your app for iOS 7, you've got to redesign it. Right. Or you got to optimize for it. Right. They will be able to say, like, you know, there are some apps that make no sense for them to have an eyewatch screen. But they can say, like, you can get at the eyewatch,

but to do it, you have to do it our way and in this fashion. Right. And that makes it more of an extension. What's the Iwatch price point? 399. The first one? It was like $3.99 to me. I think that's probably right.

I mean, this thing is the future. I mean, are you thinking it's good touchscreen? Right? Yeah. It has to be. It doesn't have to be. That's not. Yeah.

I don't see Apple making a device that is an eye device. A color touchscreen, like, makes it bigger and makes the battery not great. The rumor, the rumor for a year now has been that they were having battery problems. Well, the battery thing seems like the biggest issue. Right. They can, I mean, the iPhone cannot last a day. Right. Like, I mean, I'm stunned and surprised having just been.

reusing an iPhone again for a little bit how bad the battery life is. It's really, it's a terror. I don't want to deal with it. It's a terror. You didn't plug it all day. I plug in all day. I'm not even playing all day.

If I mentioned the battery life on this thing is ridiculous. Is it really good? It's really good. You should let me borrow that. I can't, I don't think so. I can't remember. I'm sort of like reinvigorated about the Z1. Especially after our last Vergecast where you guys were looking at pictures.

You're like, oh, that's definitely the iPhone. I'm like, nope, that's the Z1. I actually feel like, Like, you know what? It's a really good camera, but all of the other stuff is just like stupidly good. The worst thing about this is the screen viewing angles. No, it's a glass back. That's the worst thing about that.

The glass bag? It's terrible. That doesn't bother me. What's really interesting that I just discovered is that there are a few scratches on the screen. That screen is not great. There is a, this is a, the thing that says Sony on it, there is a screen protector on here that Sony puts on their devices that you can remove. And there's just a screen under here that also has glass on it. like this is a

adhesive thing it's like really really well attached there's videos online where people are like yeah you just get a scalpel and put it under it not a scalpel

like an exacter knife you put it under here to pull it up and then you peel it off and it's like it's just a protector but it and then your screen gets

destroyed the first well I don't know I don't know it's um it's I don't know what the glasses I have to you just open your phone

you just look directly at the screen and just start breaking into pixels but I don't know why I don't know why you would take it off that's the thing like it's basically

the screen. Right. So I can't understand what we're talking about? We're talking about Apple earnings. We're not with that? So now we should talk about it. We're just staying.

We're talking about Iowa. Oh, Pebble. We did the Pebble. We did the Pebble. No, the next, actually a surprisingly big piece of news in a very minor way. TMNT, the first teenage media turtle

pictures from Michael Bay's movie. You ever see those? And then Paramount freaked out and was like to everybody in the world, you need to pull these or we're going to see you for copyright infringement. Yeah. Or trademark infringement, whatever the hell it was. That was great.

But they're also available all over the internet go, just Google it. I mean, seriously, like, our legal people were like, yeah, they know they're going to lose and they can't take them down from everywhere. They're just making a big show out of it, so... Yeah. But, um...

They actually kind of look like the Teenage Ninja Turtles from the movies from the, uh, in the old movies. So that's cool? Michael Bay, he's gonna, you know, he's doing it. It's gonna have a meltdown with the turtles. They're a little bit closer to the comics. Him and Shredder. What?

No, no. A little bit close. I read the comics. He is Shredder. That would be the best. Oh, there are also pictures of Shredder. Yeah. Anyhow.

And he looks all right. I hope Crang is in the movie. Crang is the brain inside the robot body. I'm aware of Craig. Dude, I play the TMNT role playing game. Oh, my God. Are you serious?

Yeah, of course. Wow. You should get together. Do you want to talk about Nintendo phone apps or Facebook paper? Paper? I think it's what you were working towards. Am I crazy? I can't tell.

I was sort of headed there. So paper. Yeah. You did a big thing. Yeah. Paper is like newsstand. Yeah, so we thought it was going to be. Well, that's the thing.

It was supposed to be like flipboard. That's what we were expecting. but that's there. There's all the little news things. But on top of that, it has, like, the standard, like, Facebook news feed. And you can write to it, and you can do messaging, and you can add and remove friends. I thought they were just showing a video of, like, people playing with actual paper. Actually, that's what that video is.

But it's their commercial for the app. But here's the thing about it. It's really good. If, like, if you use Facebook at all, use this app and not the Facebook app. because it's faster, it's prettier, it's nicer, it's just simpler. It's everything that you want from Facebook. Where's the information being curated from? So the Facebook part is just your Facebook.

Also, it's your Android app because I have not. Not on Android. It's just iPhone right now. And then the news feeds are curated by people that Facebook hire. We're on it, by the way. That's wonderful. Well, that's great. There's more breaking news.

Ross is literally like flashing red at me. Uh-uh. Breaking. Pentagon announces nomination of Michael Rogers, U.S. Fleet Cyber Command is head of the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command. Oh, cool. New NSA boss. Great.

Michael Rogers, I know you're watching this or something. Michael Rogers, we'd love to speak to you. Please talk to us. By your plans for the NSA. Yeah. And how you will further spy us. Yeah. I mean, Ross, you can just see what you're typing right now.

You might as well just tell him to call me. Just tell him to call. Yeah. Yeah. Just can you put in my phone number in Google doc that you're working from? he'll just be able to ring us. So you want to know what his interview was like? He walked in and they're like, you think we're going to hire you?

And he said, yeah, I read that you would. And they're like, you're hired. This is the guy. You know, you're going to hire me. This is the rumor. No surprise this year. I mean, like, I don't know. You know, we watched the state of the union.

We're waiting for anything about that stuff to happen. It's like Obama gave a speech. The best thing about the state of the union was Biden going. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what's funny. What's funny about the state? No, I wish.

Somebody, somebody who he really likes. Yeah. What's funny about the State of the Union is that it was all completely overshadowed by the dude from Staten Island saying he was going to throw a reporter off of a balcony. Literally, if you watch the news right now, it's like, yeah, Obama and State of the Union, whatever. But have you heard about Michael Grimm and him throwing a guy over the balcony? It's like, that's a way. That's cool. You think that he that was like Goddust.

Wait, which was more boring? State of the Union or the Grammys? Ooh. Well, Grammys was started off strong. Yeah. And got boring. Yeah. Dude, it was like three hours and 45 minutes.

It's crazy long. They ruined one more than it already had been. They ruined Metallica's 1. Yeah. By, like, that was terrible. The high hat, all you could hear was... Oh, my God. The hi-hat was so loud.

So loud. But here's the thing. Here's the thing. Some great performance. I'm laughing that hard because every time the high hat started, John, our producer, would just,

like, you would just tweet like, oh my God, this makes. Yeah. No, no, the hi-hats was crazy. But the Grammys, I like how we're to segueing from, I don't know what the hell we're going to do it, the Grammys.

The Grammys were great. Okay, the Beyonce, J-Z performance at the top of the show. That was amazing. killer. The Lord performance, even though she's totally insane, was really cool. It was really cool. Dark horse, forget about it.

Yeah. Awesome. Like, so goth. Look, I like the Imagine Dragons thing, too. I did. No, that was terrible. I liked it. That was terrible. I did a little Taylor Swift dancing. That was, oh my God. Taylor Swift dancing. It was amazing. The worst thing I've ever seen about entire life. It was like my brain.

She's the only person in Roos trying to have a good time. My whole brain was assaulted. My eyes and brain were assaulted. But my bruce are so, like, It's like a mom. Her moves are such mom moves. It's out of control. Later in the show when everybody was dancing, everybody was dancing like that.

And it made me feel so good to know that a giant room full of the most famous, richest musicians on the planet can't dance any better than I can. It was awesome. I don't know. Some of them could dance better than you. Usher was there.

Usher was like, he's like, I got to tone it down. But not Taylor Swift. There were a lot of better before. There were like, there were like this like Casey, Casey Underwood or something. I don't know what her name is. She's basically like Carrie Underwood, but she's like, what is going on right now? I don't know. By the way, this piano thing.

Oh, they should have done a punch thing. Leave her alone on that too. This piano thing. The other thing is all bullshit. That was such like theatrics. And also like, like, it's like Tori Amos called. The reason the Beyonce performance was good. She wants her hair flipping back.

It's because all of those performers are like, screw it, turn on the auto tune. Except for any of the comedy paris. She definitely did not have the auto tune on. Death punk, Ferrell definitely did not have the auto tune on. No, that was like John tweeted, like,

remember whenever I was it for singing on National Television that you had to be able to sing? And it is like true. It's like I know, like, Ferrell can sing certain parts of songs. Yeah. But like,

they're definitely our part of music. No, that performance of Get Lucky was the worst karaoke of ever heard. And he's like Stevie Wonders. They're just jammed. It's like, Steve Wonders here. I was hoping that the, The shade in front of Daft Punk would actually never come down.

I was like, oh, my God. I was judging you. The shade would stay up. They would just, they would never come out. They're like, yeah. No, but it was awesome when they lowered it. I mean, it was really great. The best part about Daft Punk being there was, and I took a few pictures of it.

I literally ran up to my TV. It was taking pictures. Daft Punk just like casually being there in their robot. In their robot helmets. Yeah. Just like the whole time, which I have to say is the best. Like, it's so awesome for them. And they won so many Gramies.

First off, we don't know if it was even them. That's the first thing. Oh, God. I didn't even think of that. Yeah, they could send daf punks all over the place. What's so great, though, is like, I mean, you could do whatever you want inside that helmet. You can make any kind of face you want. They can be having a cell phone conversation with somebody on a Bluetooth headset.

Like, you don't know what's going on inside. They can be watching a movie. Like, I don't know what's going on inside the helmet. But what I do know is it's their choice. Everybody else has to be subjected to reality 24-7. Anyhow, I think, so I'd like to have a helmet. And they open the curtain. Also, their faces are completely covered.

They don't have to worry if they get a zitter. something. They're happy. It's amazing. We don't know if they're happy, but that's the beauty of the helmet. So the question is when they're not performing, they're sitting around in the living room watching TV. If it's so comfortable. In the nude.

With a helmet on. In the nude with a helmet on. Yeah. I would think that if I wore a helmet whenever I was in public, I would start wanting to wear it when I was in home. I can get you a helmet. I think they, so people do sell really expensive replicas of those helmets, which I definitely have considered purchasing at one point or another. But, but I think that they, I mean, look, there are pictures of them.

They used to not wear the helmets. Yeah. Like, long before. Def Punk War helmets. They had faces. They lost their faces. They were forced to wear helmets. Chris was saying they could be the first immortal band, right?

Because all they have to do is like hand off the helmet. It's like, it's like, uh... Like, Affunk will be here forever. It's like James Bond. Like sort of like how, here they are on eBay. Wow. This is crazy. There's some really expensive ones that have the electronics and stuff.

Look at $1,500. With gloves. Like, seriously? I mean, let's see the picture of somebody with it on. Yeah. So here's what crazy about it. If you do spend $500 on this and you're like the right height and have the right style, pretty much you could go to like a club and people would probably think you're actually.

But you need a friend. Yeah. Yeah. I've never seen like one robot solo. Yeah. I don't know what's going on here. Can we see the other helmet? This is not my favorite helmet.

This is not my favorite helmet. The other thing I like this is the, this is the, this is the, this is the one. The Guy Manuel one. This one is awesome. Do they make a motorcycle helmet that looks like this? Maybe they have to at this point. This one is not exactly what he had on.

You know, it's funny. It's that record, I think, is not. It's a good record. It has some good tracks on it. But it has some extremely weird moments. Yes. And as a whole, as a... Like the Paul Williams track, touch.

The worst, one of the worst songs in the world. Like, it's really bad. And, like, I get that they were, like, into a certain style they wanted to do. That record is, I would say this. It's... What's the German... The German dude speaking. Everything is forgiven because of that track.

That's Georgia by Maroder. Yeah. That song is amazing. But it also sounds like the band Zombie, if you've ever heard them. And it also kind of sounds like Trans Am, if you've ever heard them. So, like, it is really good. That's my favorite song on the record. Actually, that or doing it right.

I mean, doing it right is really, really, like, doing it right is like a perfectly formed single. Oh, my God. Somebody just tweeted the best conspiracy theory at me. Let's hear it. It doesn't involve Def Punk. Did someone die at the end? Punked everyone at the Grammys. They were in.

sitting, they were in there, in the audience, with their helmets off, along with the robots, like sitting behind them. That's possible. Wait, is there proof of that? Yeah. Let me. Is there a conspiracy theory of that? It's like, you're trying to airplay to the podcast right now.

I don't know what to do it. Just do you search, DAF Punk, you know. I don't know what to do. I literally brought up the airplay thing. He's like, oh, what do I put it? I don't know. I would do death punk Grammy conspiracy. C-O-N.

What are you going to do with it's there? That's not going to help anything. It's this one. It's a Reddit. No, it's actually this right here. Can we get Eli's screen up on the screen? No. Screen my screen.

It's not helping anything. This is the thing I was just one of the best moments ever. Burge Castle, ladies and gentlemen. These are the, I mean, they're probably wrong. This probably isn't true. Wait, really? Can I see this on the big screen? I don't want to get a look at this.

Oh, there we go. So here's a picture of the dudes recently. Pump it up behind N Eli, would you? Okay. And then here are some guys sitting behind them in this, like, sunglasses. That's like very possibly, that's possible.

Wait a second. You're saying the guy in the sunglasses on the left? Yeah. Right scroll down. And then this is them. I, no, those are not the same people. I like this theory. Those are not the same people.

No, no, I like it. They're not the same people. Okay, fine. I mean, I guess it's possible, but I don't think it's the same people. It would be incredible who it was. It would be incredible, but I don't think it's correct. I mean, it would be easy to figure this out. It's on Reddit.

So let's see. I'm being. There you go. Okay. So there's the person who's like, yeah, here's who the people are. it's not them. Wait. There's a guy in the comments who's like...

No. You know, I think the glory of Daftunk is that you can believe anything you want. No, what's great about is that somebody would even suggest that. That's why the helmets are awesome. They're like, they were other people in the helmets and they were sitting casually next to them. Like, that didn't happen. Is there a way that I can transition from here to McLamore to John Leisure? You mean McLamore.

I said MacLamore. MacLamor had a big night. Who apparently has a little buddy and that's like in the name of his band and I Ryan Lewis. Ryan Lewis. He's not his little buddy. He's the guy who makes all of Maclemore's songs. By the way, by the way, hold on.

Can we play my game? I have a new game that I play. Okay. When you see a picture of McClmore and McClomor and Ryan Lewis together, imagine that Ryan Lewis has a small remote control somewhere that he's using to control Maclemore. Now, can we find a picture of McLemore and Ryan Lewis together? Okay.

Here we go. You ready? I mean, you imagine that he's remote controlling him. How long we're going to wait for this? I don't know. It's up to Nelah. Neil I found the one site that cannot load photos. I just meant that whenever they talked about it on the Grammys, it was like, Macleboro.

I think if you see them standing together, you'll begin to wonder. This picture will be particularly good for this. You'll begin to wonder. Who is this guy? I don't know who these people are. You've completely failed. I went to their website. Google image search.

Right here. Okay, here we go. Great example. By the way, this picture is hilarious. Right. Okay, just imagine down, you can't see it, but in his right hand, Ryan Lewis is holding a small. like touchscreen remote control that operates McLemore.

Can we see another picture of them together? Here we go. This is great stuff. This is great. Yeah, okay. Yep. There you go. Now you got it.

Okay, it makes total sense here. He could easily be in his pocket, right hand. Okay, let's see another one. Can we get another picture up? Oh, I was right behind me. Holy crap. Yeah, right? He's right there.

I mean, it would it be amazing to discover that he's a robot, right? No. That's the only picture you have? I got a whole bunch right here. It's all happening. Oh my God. He's hiding in his pocket. See that?

What else we got? You can't see his hands. Can't see his hand right there. Hand off screen. Oh, there's. No, but this one's the wristband. Maybe it's smart. Yeah, okay.

His hand is hiding. He does this a lot, and I think that's what spurred the thought. I don't know what's going on with these. Okay, great stuff. Macklemore said an amazing, amazing text to Kendrick Lamar, like, apologizing. But here's the thing. But here's the thing.

Somebody on Twitter did the most amazing. They had a picture of the text, maybe one that not everybody saw. I just need to find this so we can show it to people. Because this to me is like one of the best. Really? It's one of the best things ever. Yeah, hold on. Let me just, this is going to be so hard.

Is this it that you got robbed? Yeah, there's another one though. Hold on a second. This is going to be a horrible moment where I try to find. How do you find your favorites? I don't know about my favorites in the. in the, this is so horrible.

Oh, here we go. Oh, on the, yeah, you're. Oh, yeah. Oh, you got it? Is this it? No, there's another one. Hold on. Here it is.

How do I, how do I, how do I, how do I, sure this isn't that? Can I share my screen with you? I'm on board with this theory. I'm going to, Eli, what's the best way to get you this tweet? How do I tweet?

Tweet it at me? If I tweeted at you or you can be able to get it there? Or send it to me in chat? Send it to you in chat. Oh, wait. I won't get it here. Where can I? Retweet it right now.

This is some quality version. Oh, yeah, that's it. Go to my favorites. Yeah. Go to my favorite. We're literally on Twitter. No, no, no, no. Just go to my favorites.

Go to Josh Topols. Joshua Topolski. Oh, my God. You're right there. Go to Josh and Tobolski. We're going to follow what you're favoring right now. No, that's okay. Now, hold on.

I have no idea how to find favorites. Go on it. Scroll up. Scroll up. Scroll up. Scroll up. Is it on the left favorites. Oh, weird.

You didn't know that? That's a terrible. Oh, you got to be signed in. You can't see somebody's favorites? Come on. You can't see somebody's favs? What did you want me to do? Send it to Ross?

Yeah. Text it to him? Hip chat it. This is really... By the way, this is not worth. Okay. Oh my God. Now we know how many characters it is.

It's all of the characters. Here we go. You and Jordan are in a race. Keep going. This is so not worth it. Is this me? There we go. Can you open that up?

That's not worth it at all. This is a letter. Maclemoreman? Maclemoron. Sorry, my brother. I think you deserve the Grammy. I'm totally lower shades. Mclemoredified.

Anyone who thinks otherwise is lower shades, I'm McElmoron. Come on. That's the best. It was totally worth it. Totally worth all this trouble. Why is there a pen?

That guy deserves a lot more credit for that tweet. I just want to say he only got 90 retweets. Can we get his number up? I don't know who he is. Is it still dead Ross? Hello? What happened? Did our thing go down?

We went away for a minute. Good. Nobody saw that, right? Well, that's right. Perfect timing. The stream went down because of... We're maclomortified. See? See? Anyhow, not worth it.

Hopefully somebody had it could fall over it. It just was too much buildup. Anyhow, what were we talking about? You want to talk about Maclmore? I was talking about... I was going to go from there somehow. Maclemore, John Lager's favorite rapper. Oh, God.

And then I was going to do a thing. Oh, John Leder. But I don't really know how to get there. John Ledger. I mean, how much you want to go into this? People are asking me to talk about it. Yeah, but you know, we're, you know. Can we just put up the T-shirt?

Can we just like, yeah, that was great. And I'd like to give whoever made this T-shirt credit. He's like got into a little argument. I didn't get into any argument. I didn't argue with anyone. Meil I got yelled out by John Ledger on Twitter. Like incoherently maniacly yelled at. And this is great.

And then he deleted all the tweets. The CEO of T-Mobile deleted, like, angrily, incoherently tweeted at me. We're doing this. That we're no good. The Verge is bad. That you should read Enafrievee to Recode. He's like Switch to Recode.

It was really weird. Like I don't know. But then he deleted it all. All I did was tweet him at screenshot and I was like, you're going to like throw shade at me. Like just know that it's still here. What's weird about John Ledger being mad at the verge for some reason is that we're on his side. And I like,

I don't know. I feel like the last time I talked about him, I was like, yeah, I'm thinking about switching to T-Mobile because I like what they're doing. But, you know, I guess he didn't. That fell on deaf ears. I do think it's insane and psychotic that they put out this fake press release

with fake quotes from Ralph De La Vega in it. It's nuts. And not nuts like, not nuts like, whoa, they're really sticking it to the man, but nuts like, this doesn't make sense to me. Like, the thing about T-Mobile is their ideas are actually pretty good and I sort of respect them for what they're trying to do. And like John Ledger doesn't have to like stab somebody in the eye every time he talks to, like, get his point across. I feel like it's like enough already with like the you swear and you're wearing t-shirts and you're a badass. Like you like pulled up on your motorcycle and like ripped off your leather jacket and you've got a bright pink T-Mobile t-shirt and then you put your Batman hood on. Yeah.

He put up this ad everywhere. This is what it looks like when a huge corporation is wetting their pants. Yeah. I don't think that's what it looks like. Yeah. It's like it looks like a huge corporation is competing with you. Well, first of it would, the corporation would have to be wearing it. Look, I'm happy that they're scaring the shit out of AT&T.

Like my entire career is built on yet. yelling at 18T. I like the idea of a corporation of it itself, if you think of it as like one of their corporate buildings wearing a huge pair of pants

with a wet spot in the front of it. Like the incredible. Like Team Mobile. Team Mobile should like drape the front of an 18T building with huge slacks. Yes.

With a wet spot. And that's what it looks like what a corporation is wetting itself. We don't have talk about this a lot and we actually we only have a few minutes last because we have to be done. Oh yeah.

Spot on time today. But I will say that I am firmly convinced that like he knew what he was doing. He was playing character for a long time. And now he has like become the character. Yeah, it's like, it's like when you tell a lie for long enough, you start to believe it yourself.

Yeah. You know where I heard that? An episode of Mr. Belvedere. About the older son on Mr. Belvedere discovering. He was just stuck with you this entire time. About the older son of Mr. Belvedere discovering that his parents, like his mother was pregnant with him before they were married. Yeah.

And they'd been lying to him about it the whole time because they didn't want him to feel like he was, you know, conceived out of wedlock. And his dad sets him down, like, towards the end of the episode. It's like, you know, son, when you tell a lie enough, you start to believe it yourself. And I was like, well, that is some deep shit. Guys, the next time.

Some deep Mr. Belvedere, I was like eight when I saw it. The next time we do a John Lutter's supercutt. We have to end with this scene for Mr. Belvedere. Can anybody find that episode? It was a very special Mr. Belvedere. Oh, God. By the way, most of you watch this probably don't know what Mr. Belvedere is.

Check it out. Check it to it. I think you're really good at the tweet. I actually got a lot of tweets when I wrote the Pebble Review and I was like, this reminds me in the palm and I tweeted it. I got a lot of tweets from people who are like, we don't know what you're talking about.

Yes. And that makes me very sad. Listen, millennials, okay? We're old, we're old. We're old.

We're basically, we're basically, in 10 years is just going to be so crotchy. It's going to be like, it's going to be a bunch of handy runies. Get off my robot lawn. That doesn't make any sense. Why would the lawn be a robot?

Why wouldn't it be a robot? Why wouldn't it be a robot? If I'm going to have a lawn, I want to be made out of robots. The robotic lawn lawn is built by a robotic lawnmower. I don't know. All right. That's definitely the end of the bench. One last thing.

One of our worst. We didn't talk about Nintendo making phone apps. Oh, Nintendo. Yeah. So they have patternings. They said they're going to make a non-wearable health device. Which is insane. It's going to be a new scale.

An awesome scale. Yeah. It's smart, but the idea that, you know, a non-wearable health device that isn't really a video game is going to save or help Nintendo and anyway. Maybe it's a mirror.

You don't know. Maybe it's a mirror that you put in your bathroom and it tells you like whether you're fat or not. We're going to start making profits again by 2015 because we're doing this. Right. It's like, okay. So Oana said,

Nintendo will use smart devices to make connections with customers, but he ruled out releasing existing games on those platforms. Believe it a company is unable to show its strength as an integrated hardware software business elsewhere. Which is wrong. But it's wrong.

But also, it just, Service apps will be released this year. The company will seek to use smart devices for services just selling games that have previously confined to game consoles. Such devices are likely to provide better experiences. Hewada recognizes. Such devices are likely to provide better experiences than Nintendo's own hardware for certain features

unrelated to games. And it's like, have you never... What does that mean? Like, you get to like manage your... Just because Nintendo made... Shitty consoles doesn't mean that it's a right strategy to put them on other... on phones.

Like, they made bad... a bad console this generation. I think what they're trying to do is they're trying to do the thing Sony did with the PlayStation phone and the phone stuff. That was a great success. They're not trying to do that. No, but they're not doing that because they don't want to release. They're not putting their games on phones.

They're doing, they're like, they're like toying with things that are in the periphery of doing that, but they're not going to straight do it, right? That's what, that's what this is about. Right. And, like, read, you know, San Bifers reporting on this.

It's not a great idea for them. I'm thinking more of like smart. Glass. Yeah. Like that's kind of what they're doing. Kind of like that. Only you can buy stuff. Yeah, but.

I mean, I've used smart glass exactly once. Smart Glass, uh, when you play, you're talking about the Xbox thing? Yeah. I mean, I've used it. I used it all the time of the game and it worked terribly and it was not, it wasn't a great addition. The one place that's awesome is, uh, on Xbox one.

If you play Madden, you can like do all kinds of stuff with smart class. Okay. That's neat. I mean, that sounds cool, but, but like, other than that's not, that's not a commercial and important as Nintendo that only makes, uh, phone games. Yeah, no, I mean, the argument is, and I've heard it, I've heard it from everybody, I've heard from Microsoft. Like, why is an office on the, on iPhone? And they're like, well, no, there's no big company that makes real money selling software on mobile.

Right. Okay, well, that's, no, the scale doesn't, the scale doesn't, right. So I assume Nintendo's making the same argument. But, I mean, they're Nintendo. If they put Mario on the iPhone and they sold it for $15 instead of three, they would make the money. I mean, I think the problem is that they did it for 15 or 20 or whatever, like, that could be interesting. Yeah. But.

But. Well, they don't, they're like, culturally, they fundamentally don't believe that that's the right thing for them to do. I think there's also this issue. There's, I think there's also this issue that like their, their hook was motion gaming. Well, that was so easily borrowed. No, but I mean, now that the connect exists, I feel like that's taken a lot of that, that fire and excitement. I think, like, when kids are like, oh, my God, you know, mom and dad, we want to, like, get a game system that does this, like, crazy motion stuff. They're, they're look, the connect is the thing that they look at.

It's not, they're not thinking about, like, they're not. They're not thinking about, like, they're not thinking about this weird, huge control. Like, I played the Wii. Every time I use the Wii. I'm like, why am I using this? I played one game on the Wii U. The zombie game. Zombie U.

Yeah. And it was really fun. I never finished it because it was like after a while. I was like, okay, like, it's cool. Like I get all this stuff. It's really exciting. But I just, I kind of like my interest weighing. And then there was not another game.

There wasn't another game where I was like, this seems really cool. And I get that there are things you could do. I think their biggest problem is they didn't build. They needed to do two things. They needed to build some awesome new way to interact. act with your games, which they kind of did, sort of. It was like a pretty crappy experience in a way because it's a capacitive and all this stuff.

But then they didn't build a console that's competitive. Right. They didn't build an Xbox one. They didn't build like a hub for your entertainment. And unfortunately for them, things have moved on. Do you have your TV plugged on your Xbox? No, I don't, because, because there's several reasons. I have not bought an Xbox one.

I don't buy the White One. I don't plug them. I don't plug them. Yeah, the white one looks like a crappy Xbox One. Yeah, I think the black one looks better. But I don't have it plugged in because the sound, it's not passing through sound. No, I keep asking everybody if they have the TV plugged in the Xbox one. And I already have enough sound problems.

Like, I don't need to add one by like adding the Xbox. I mean, most people have talked to you. The interface, that interface isn't that much more useful than like Time Warner's refreshed interface. It's only slightly more useful. That is the weakest praise of all time. No, but I'm just saying. That's like, there you go. I'm saying like, yeah.

That's like the TV. It's the lesser of the evils, but it's not like such a revolutionary way to interact with my TV that I'm like, oh my God, I have to use this all the time. Yeah. And that I think includes the VergeCast for this week. Yeah, we're done. We've got to get out of it. We'll be back next week.

If you want to get in touch with us, you can email us Vergecast at Theverge. You can find us on Twitter. The Verge is at Verge. Oh, I'm sorry, you can leave a comment in the post when it goes up. You can start a forum topic. You can yell at me. You can yell at me.

Well, you can find us on Twitter. The Verge is at Verge. I'm Joshua Topolski. Neelyte is reckless. Dieter is Backlon. B-A-C-L-O-N. it's a perfectly great reason for that. I'm like a broken record.

I can't do the same things I always do. It's really annoying. And, oh, and that's it. That's it. We're going to be back next week. Yeah. It's going to get weird. By the way, if you haven't seen it, check out the latest 90 seconds on the verge.

Oh, it's amazing. Today or yesterday? Yesterday. Yesterday. Featuring Bryce Slade, who's one of our newest, one of our hot new performers. Nobody on YouTube understands that we really like. And in fact, after I sign off, I'd love it if we could just run 90 seconds. I don't know if you guys are set up for that in the booth, but you find a way to make it happen.

But anyhow, that's the Vergecastle this week. John was more than ready. And as always, frankly, look, I'm going to just say it. You know, what we hope will happen with you and your family is not going to be the outcome. The outcome is far worse. And, you know, it sucks, but that's the way it is.