The Vergecast - Introducing Circuit Breaker, Google hardware, and the next Apple Watch

Episode Date: April 29, 2016

With Nilay out, Dieter brings in the editor of Circuit Breaker, Paul Miller, and news editor Jake Kastrenakes to discuss this week in tech. Racked senior reporter Nicola Fumo engages the hype matrix in this week's episode of Vergecast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Greetings, mobile accomplishers. Welcome to the Vergecast. We were recording this on April 28, 2016. And as you can tell from that stunningly professional introduction, I am not Nilai Patel. I am Deeter Bone. And I am joined by... Not Dieter Bone.

I'm Paul Miller. I'm Jake Castanakis. I'm Nicola. Can I ask a question? Yeah. What's a mobile accomplisher? I have to explain this like every 10 Vergecast. I'm sorry I've missed it.

That's how Dieter introduced his... legacy podcast of a decade ago. That's correct. A mobile Accomplisher, so whenever companies make gadgets, they come up with like cute demographic terms for the people that they think will buy them. And Mobile Accomplisher was the group that Palm CEO, Ed Colligan, thought

was going to buy the Trio 680, which was the first trio without an antenna and came in multiple colors. This is a very well-known fact, but you literally can't ask Dieter any question. It's impossible. without trio or palm popping up in the answer. It's great.

Yeah. It's good. So we had a big week. Paul works at the verge now. Officially, we like to call him Al Plumliere. Yeah, it was a secret. I had a pseudonym for the first time ever. As Al Plumliier is how you pronounce it.

Plumliier. Yeah. You have to really get into it. I mean, it's wonderful because I feel like Nelai himself has been threatening to write under a pseudonym for years. And finally, he just made you do it. Yeah, that's how he does. Neli is at a conference in New Orleans.

I assume that it also involves, I don't know, drinking and partying. I was going to say drinking. But we're here, and we just launched this week, Circuit Breaker, which is the world's best gadget blog. It's a gadget blog that comes to you from The Verge. It is available at theverge.com slash Circuitbreaker, and also at Facebook.com slash Circuitbreaker. putting up videos, Facebook instant articles.

We're talking about gadgets. Paul, tell us about Circuit Breaker. Circuit Breaker is a gadget blog. And there it is. It has just gadgets. I think that's the thing is you go to verge.com slash circuit breaker and you're going to see gadgets. And I think if that's important to you, you know who you are.

And I love just pulling up that page. Like, that's a gadget. That's a gadget. That's pretty much a gadget. Basically a gadget. Right. Yeah. I mean, we did something about there's this.

I'm excited about the story because this is the story my dad wanted to talk to me about the other night. Was this machine learning thing that automatically classifies black and white images and then turns them into color images? Okay. Is that a gadget? Because I put it on Circuit Breaker. We actually had huge, massive Knockdown, Drag-on arguments, but whether or not apps could go on Circuit Breaker or not. And we came down with yes. Why?

Because you run them on gadgets. Oh, okay. Also because we're not monsters. I think that's the kind of thing that I want out of a gadget blog, though, right? It's like it's the gadgets and then what I can do with the gadgets I have. Right. I'm looking for software that makes it more of a gadget, you know, and I feel like a novel machine learning technique. It's like an advancement of the state of the art.

Yeah. That's like when a new graphics card comes out. That's my excuse at least. My favorite part of Circuit Breaker is the reclaiming of the word blog, which became like kind of dirty for a little while, because it meant unpolished. But now you're like, no, it's back. It's really freeing. Yeah. I'm experimenting with new prose styles.

I'm experimenting with really old pros styles that I use over and over again. Like I expect me to type the like accept comma, well, comma, like four times a day. That's all I do. Except well. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what you talk about. I like the argument that you had with yourself in the one story.

You just pasted a bunch of people's slack arguments into a story. Oh, yes. We wrote them into an argument, made yourself look brilliant. It really took our quotes out of context. No, but I mean, I admitted to it. That's the highlight of server breaker for me so far. Yeah, this was an argument that we had about whether or not we should write about the fact that AT&T said that they were closing down its 2G network, the edge network, which they said three years ago that they were doing or four years ago that they were doing. What does AT&T's 2G edge network mean to you?

It's commercials I've seen. Mm-hmm. I think you get a lot of data. Is that? Or is it the thing where you can trade in? Okay, I made the same mistake. I'm like, oh, dang, AT&T is shutting down its trade-in program. No, that's AT&T.

I think that's Next. I think Verizon is Edge. That's the trading. Verizon was right. Yeah. That's it. Edge is the network that came before 3G. Oh.

So the iPhone originally was on Edge. and then the iPhone 3G was like, this is a big deal because now 3G. But Edge was... Oh, yes, I remember seeing that in the corner. Why did they call it edge and not 2G? Yeah. Or something.

Because nobody... We weren't on the G's yet. No, I don't think we're on the G's yet. There may have been some people to call it 2Gs. By the time we got to 2.5G, well, by then we got to 3G, 18T was behind on its rollout of the HSPA network.

And so they started saying when the first iPhone was coming out that, no, man, we're not just 2G. We're 2.5G because our edge is really, really fast. Right. Yeah. Did Edge sound like fast and exciting? Dude, it was.

Okay. I never got a chance to use Edge. In the U.S., there was CDMA on Sprint and Verizon, and that was, like, legitimately faster than Edge. But all the cool phones from Europe were running on either Edge or later HSPA. And so I would get phones that you would have to use an AT&T or at the time voice stream because like that that was a cool phone from Europe and I couldn't get the stuff on CDMA

because everything on CDMA was giant blocky white labeled HT phones like the PPC-Sys 700. Yeah. Oh, the MotoQ. Moto Q. That was 3G. That was CDMA, yeah.

Which I thought was was edge. I had the E62, the Nokia. That thing was hot. That was edge. Yeah. That was my introduction. Yeah, it was just, it was the jump

from like a 144 modem, like, slowest barely can experience any internet so you just don't even bother, to actually useful internet on a phone. Didn't either you live through like the transition from 3G to LTE? Yeah. And was that not like awesome? It was cool. It was fine.

I don't remember. It's like imagine going from, I don't know, GPRS, like the original G, the OG. The OG. Wait, so G is not generation. G is G.R.S? No, G is generation. But GPRS was the first widespread data network that wasn't, that was, like, really packet-switched and, like, actually, like, internet and not, you know, the crazy page or stuff that Blackberry

and early editions of Palm are using. Or, like, a literal dial-up. Right. Well, I mean, you'd still, like, use dial-up codes to use GPRS. Yeah. I mean, you'd, like, programmer and you didn't listen for, like, the modem noise. Anyway, that was, it was so bad you couldn't access the real web. you could only access the text version of it over WAP.

And it was just patively slow. And then all of a sudden you got 2G or CDMA and you were able to look at images on your phone, which is the thing that took half a day before. All this to say that Circuit Breaker... Why are we talking about old gadgets? You're talking about new gadgets? That's what Circuit Breaker's for. It's a blog, but it's also kind of nerdy.

Yeah, it was super nerdy. We're unapologetically nerdy. I want to talk about our favorite gadgets from this week. And I think Nicola actually picked the best one. Yeah? Yeah. Dyson, vacuum maker, et cetera, is now reversing air and making a hair dryer. A crazy-looking hair dryer.

Yeah. Like... It's very compact. It's $400 plus. Of course. And it's supposed to be great. Wait, I have a question. It has this, like, hollow tube.

Isn't someone's hair going to get, like, sucked into that thing and, like, ripped out of their head? I mean, I'm sure they thought through that. I feel confident they thought through that. I mean, it looks like a very beautiful hair. dryer. Yeah. I would want people to see that in my house and think I'm living in the future. I wouldn't even use it. The funnyest part to me is like air going, sucking air out versus pushing air in the other direction. Like making vacuum cleaner. It's the opposite. It's really humorous to me. When I first got that like press release, I was like, huh, new directions.

Are you getting one? No. No, because it's $400. Yeah, and I got a good guy at home. I don't need a new one. Jake, here's her favorite gadget or two from the week. Favorite gadget or two. Did you see the Furbo. Ashley shot a video with this. Oh. With two adorable dogs yesterday. Yes. It's amazing.

It like shoots cashews out. I mean, does it shoot cashews out? It's dog treats, hey? I don't know. Yeah, it shot something out. Anyway, it's this little thing that you can remotely control with your phone. And it has like a camera on it. Yeah, there's a camera so you can see your dogs.

You can talk to them. And you can remotely shoot treats out of it. Or I guess you could shoot food into your own mouth if you really wanted to. I wonder if this is going to change dog's relationships with objects or with love in general. Because you have this new talking box that they don't know it's you. And they're just going to sit there and hang out with the box. Yeah, and like listen to it because it's comforting to hear. And then it shoots a treat.

Like it's going to like the box better than you're going to come home and it's going to be like, what? Do you think the dog would care about your disembodied voice, though? I feel like no. I feel like dogs probably are smart enough to know. and love certain voices, but what if it gets changed coming through speaker? Well, that's the thing, because I've seen people like video chat,

try to video chat, say hi to a dog. Does not work. Dog does not care. Yeah, but there's no food associated with that. If there's food associated with it, the dog will care. That's true. But they won't care about the human, right? Right.

Which is the enjoyment you get by seeing your dog and having your dog see you. I mean, this is just like, you get screw with your dog remotely. That's kind of cool. Does the dog just ignore the FaceTime? Like, does it just, like, not look at it? It's just like how babies with mirrors.

I'm assuming there's like, because there's no smell association, they just like, it's just like a totally separate thing. Yeah. Like what's this little box moving on? I had a friend who like trained his dog by watching the dog with a baby monitor. He'd leave food out, watch the dog with a baby monitor, and then could speak through the baby monitor and say no. Oh, that's crazy. He invented furbo.

Yeah, it's basically a progenitor to furbo. Yeah. Apparently these dogs that we tested Furbo on did fall in. love with this gadget. Dogs can love gadgets too. Circuit Breaker one, week one. New fan base. We're going to be explicitly for dogs. Just, yeah. I mean, honestly, if we had more like several photos essays of those dogs every day, I feel like we'd do pretty good. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Paul, what's your gadget? My favorite gadget was this company called Zotak put a PC in a backpack. So the big problem with, you know, the Oculus Rift and the Vive is you've got this wire streaming down

your neck. And it's a pretty long wire, but you can still get tangled in it and it plugs into a PC. Right. This puts that water. It plugs it into a PC on your back. But it's like a literal, like I've seen this cube that they sell, which I'm guessing this is based on. It's still a pretty big PC. Yeah. It's still a little heavy. It's got to run like that. It must have fans to like Yeah, it's got to get air through there. And then yeah, the backpack's impeding the fans. I have no idea how it works or how uncomfortable. Apparently it's going to be maybe a CompuTech, so we're going to try it out there. But it's just absurd to me, and I think it's hilarious, and I really hope, I really want to try it out.

I'm just glad people are trying crazy things. We'll get to a point where these will be portable and they can all run, you know, and everything's fine and boring. But right now, some crazy person's putting a PC with a G480 in a backpack. for the first subway photo. It's going to go up on Gothamist. Somebody wearing that on the train. I hope it's me.

I hope it's me in that subway. Mine's a trivy, which is a Bluetooth speaker that also runs Alexa. And it's like bad. My deck was like, don't buy one. I bought one. Wait, why is it bad? It looks like a really cute but useless. It's incredibly cute.

It just doesn't sound that good. And if you're not on really good Wi-Fi, the Alexa works terrible. terribly. And it's kind of buggy. But there'll be other ones like this coming soon because Amazon's letting anybody make stuff. But the thing I actually love about it is it's made by this company in Voxia. There's just some like random company that makes random teleconference crap. It's not crap. It's like whatever. But one of the things they make, they make a Wi-Fi box. And you plug the Wi-Fi box into your old-style phone line at home. Or you give it to your mom, plug into her old-style phone line at home. And then when you call it, the Wi-Fi box picks it up,

instead of the phone, and then over the internet, sends it to the app on your phone, or on your mom's phone, and then she can pick it up and talk to you. And if you want to call somebody from your landline, you can open the app, dial their number. It uses the internet to talk to the Wi-Fi box, which then uses the old telephone line to dial out. It turns like an old telephone line into an app on your phone. Wait. I'm still confused.

Can you also pick up the phone? Yeah. Are you turning old-timey phone? Old-timey phones. We've got landlines. and then we've got this Wi-Fi box. Is this Wi-Fi box coming before the landline, or is the landline hitting the Wi-Fi box?

It's like if you have two phones in your house, one's a regular old-timey phone, and one is this Wi-Fi box. And if you want, the Wi-Fi box can pick up and send it to your app. Oh. I feel like it's use-wise the opposite of having a burner phone. Because it's like you have the second phone number

that you're extremely attached to. Right. But you really have to leave it. it like as a landline. Yeah, like a legacy, like decades and decades of this phone number. See, I want to get this for my parents because I always go through the thing where like,

I gotta call my parents and they still have a landline, so I just call that, but if they're not home, then I have to deal with like, well, do I call mom or do I call dad? Which one of these two am I gonna call and who's gonna feel bad if I don't? Wait, so instead, they'll both have the app and both of their phones will ring,

and they'll fight to pick it up. Yeah, and that's not my problem. It'll be like a quick draw situation. Okay, yeah, I'm sure this would be much simpler for them as well. This will solve all the problems. Yeah. But the trivia is cool because it's just such a gadget.

It's got this like you like, I wish I brought it down here. You draw on your phone a message that you want to be on the tribby and then the tribute like pops out this little flag that's like plastic. It's just hilarious. You stick it on your fridge. It's like an easy bake oven. I don't know. Of communication. I mean, I bought one.

I don't know what. It's $200. Oh, wow. Yeah. It's really expensive. Is that like the cheapest way to, okay, not the cheapest way. And Adada is even less than that, I think. I think it's 100.

Or a tap, rather. Oh, okay. Well, then. Is there going to be an Alexa app for the phone, for phones? Like if they're opening it up to all these manufacturers, why can't I talk to Alexa right now? There's a Cortana app for Android. But that's like a hassle, right? The entire point of Alexa is like it's just sitting around somewhere listening.

Right. It's going to be in everything. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's going to be cool because it'll be in things. It'll just start, I assume it'll be like the control scheme for things. things too, right? Well, the reason that Alexa is cool as like a thing in your house to control other things is Jake, you've been reporting on how the smart home is a disaster and there's like two-any-competing standards and nobody knows who's going to win and it's, you know, home kit versus

I forget what Google's crap is called. Well, there's like Brillo and whatever the other way weave. Weave, right. Well, weave is a way to program to Brillo or something, or is the other way around. Whatever. It's confusing. There's smart things. There's blah, blah, blah. blah, blah, and Amazon just rolled in and said, we'll just talk to all of them. And it became the abstraction layer on top of all of those other gadgets. Which is crazy, because that's exactly what, like, smart things is doing. Amazon doesn't have, like, its own standard or anything. It's just, like, everybody, like, please don't worry about it.

It's chill. Just talk to our thing. It'll be good. And apparently that's working. Apparently, that's been really easy for people, whereas this other stuff that still feels like there's way too many layers going on. I would not have picked Amazon to solve this problem. No, I don't think Amazon would have picked Amazon to solve this problem.

I think Amazon had no idea what it had on its hands with Alexa. They just posted earnings. They said they did really well. Which is weird because when the Echo is first announced, I remember being in the office. We were all just like, this is the weirdest thing Amazon has ever done. Like, they just put up a webpage for it, and we were trying to make sense of what this thing was. Yeah, we didn't know what the hell it was. We were, like, trying to understand it.

where it's a speaker, I guess. It sounds like it was mostly a Bluetooth speaker. Maybe you could talk to it. I don't know. Even in our review, I feel like, it was still not totally clear what the echo was. And then it has evolved so much over like a year. There is something about, like, did you, you ever have Connect with the Xbox One? I never had the Connect, but I, like, because Microsoft has completely abandoned this plan as well.

But there was a time in your life where you had to get connect with the Xbox One and you could say Xbox on. You still can do that if you want. You can still do it. It's terrible. But the idea that you can say Xbox on and then they'll like turn on your TV and get everything running. It was cool. And like I had that brief moment in my life where I lived like that. And now anytime like I want my Xbox be on or my TV to be on, I like feel myself almost saying it.

Are you all comfortable just like talking to different random things in your house? Because I'm still like, even if I'm home alone, I'm still like I'm not ready to shout like, okay Google, do this or that. I feel fine about it. Yeah? It's once you start doing other stuff. What other people are around? Well, if other people,

hmm. Hopefully there are people you keep close to yourself because they're in your house, so they should accept you for who you are, even if you yell at stuff. Let me ask you this. Do you cook and or clean? Yes.

Are you sure? Because, like, that's the perfect moment for these things. When you're like otherwise occupied and like cooking, like doing the dishes or like cleaning or whatever cooking is like really boring. You're like, you can get into Zen mode and get into it, but I can't. And so I'm like, I need something else talking to my attention. Oh, my hands are wet.

Oh, hey, I can just yell out into the room to be entertained and be entertained. Okay, so here's the thing. Frequently I'll be like chopping up peppers or something that's going on for a while. Yeah, I'm like, yeah, I would love to just scroll through an article that I have pulled up in my phone. Oh. And I can't do that because that's, you have to take your hands off the knife. But like that's not something that, like what can talking about. What you want is a classic Samsung phone where you can gesture.

That actually is what I want, which is really depressing. I forgot about that. But, like, right, like, I don't understand what I can get from talking to it. Like, I don't care about what the score of the Mets game is. Yeah, I will say, like, as much as I love this conceptually. Get a flash briefing. Get, like, all the news of the day. Every time you ask Tribby about the weather, like, Tribby says way too many things.

Yeah. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't know. I didn't need all to know all things about weather. I don't want a flash briefing. I want to read, like, the specific article. You want to be like Alexa read to me. Yeah, I mean, that would be cool.

Articles on tape. I would use that. Yeah. Or, I don't know, if it could just be like, hey, scroll down the page, please. Like, that would be dope. I would be into that. Oh, so you're using a knife with your hand and a pepper, and you're looking somewhere else? Maybe.

I don't think that's great. Well, okay. That is a fair point, but the point is I still do not know how to entertain myself with Alexa or Syria or whatnot. I just don't know what they're going to do for minutes at a time to entertain me while I'm cooking and cleaning. I understand that I could fire off a message or two, but, I mean, to keep you occupied for like 15 minutes. Can Alexa play like Audible books? Yeah. I would do a lot of that.

I think so. I could definitely do Spotify. It definitely does like, I listen to NPR on it all the time. I guess that's cool. I guess that lets you like, especially if you're listening to music, you can kind of just quickly change between different things, which I, I have not tried. Okay, so Google has a hardware division now. This should be really cool.

They have been making random stuff and random parts of the company for a while, but now they just have a hardware division for phones and tablets and laptops and whatever else. A tap is in their glass. That Google wants to make a profit on hardware. Like, does Google want to start competing with like? They actually want to sell, successfully sell things

to people who buy things in large numbers. Yeah. I don't know. And this is a division of Google. This isn't part of, this is another alphabet. No, this is a part of Google. And it's being led by Rick Osterlo, who used to be CEO of Motorola and is like, I don't know, a very nice guy.

He's a nice guy. He's a nice guy. He's just a nice guy. Outside of perspective, why didn't they have this already? That seems weird. They make routers. They make ChromeCats. They just, like, didn't have a hardware person in charge of all those things.

Just, like, a streamlining thing, bringing everyone together. So the one thing they won't cop to is whether or not they're making phones. Like, they're still with the Nexus program letting other companies make phones. And the rumor everybody agrees is that HTC is making the next Nexus phone. Would you buy a Google phone if Google made the phone? Maybe. Maybe. I mean, the pixel's great.

How much of that is truly engineered in-house? All of it. The pixel is, like, the main thing that they really kicked them off and making stuff in-house. Yeah, but the pixel is great, but you wouldn't buy it because it's a $1,000 Chromebook. Right. Like, is Google's other hardware going to be the same way? Is it going to be something you'd buy? I mean, the pixel C is, I mean, I think it's like the price of a tablet, but I think it's too expensive because Android tablets are garbage.

Remember when they came out with that sphere? The Q? The Nexus Q. Google made that, too. That was actually the first thing. That was like a, it was like a Google TV kind of device that was going to be all made in the U.S. somehow. Yeah. It was like ridiculously heavy. It was audio only though.

What did it do? It was a sphere, but this big, about the size of like a small cantaloupe, I guess. And the top twisted, and it lit up, and you plugged a speaker into it and you used it to play music. And it costs like $300. What? Wait, how did it get on the sphere? What's that? Why is it a big heavy sphere?

No, how, like, what music are you listening to on it from where? Google Play. Google Play. Wait, this was literally just like... I really thought it was a TV thing. It maybe it was a TV thing, too. It was a media streamer, but like it was a problem... This is before Chromecast.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, okay, it had HTML, but like everybody was not using it for that. I don't think anybody used it. Well, yeah, they canceled it. It was the total fit. Yeah, okay, how was it so bad? Because I missed this. How was it so bad that they canceled?

They announced it and they canceled it within like a month. Because it was crazy expensive. It was $300. Yeah, but most companies, like you've built it, you've manufactured a bunch of them. You still like go and sell them. But like Google, it wouldn't even sell them. I thought it even refunded the people who bought. Like, how was it that bad?

That sounds like a company that needs its own hardware division to get better than this sort of. It's kind of cool looking, though. I'm looking at it now. It's like, yeah, it can only do like play movies and YouTube videos. It was dumb. It has a lot of plugs coming out of the back. What's weird. What's crazy is the way that it worked,

is basically the same way the Chromecast works. Only the Chromecast wasn't an insane. It was $35 instead of $300. So, I don't know. We'll see. I don't think they're going to make phones yet. But the crazy thing to me, the craziest thing about this, so Glass wasn't technically in Nest.

I got that. I misspoke on Twitter. But it was under control of Tony Fidel, who in Nest has been having a real hard time. Now it's part of this hardware group. And the ATAP group, which makes all the crazy shit, they make, like, touch-sensitive fabric, and they were making modular phones,

and they're the ones who came up Project Tango, and all the wild consumer stuff, is also in the hardware division. Well, sorry, this might be... And they lost for Dina Duggan. Yeah, I was going to say, who's running ATAP now? Apparently, Rickostalo. Okay.

Still, that's a huge loss for ATAP. Wait, and are you saying Tony Fidel is off glass now? Right. He was just sort of, like, hanging on to it on the side. Can you explain to me why people hate Tony Fidel at Google? because I'm getting in this vibe and like I thought everybody loved Tony Fidel People

I've met Tony Fidel's a nice person When they bought Drop Cam people The culture clashed pretty hard there And people are saying that he's basically like a classic Like Jobsian kind of tyrant Inside It's too bad There you go

I cannot speak to precisely why Because I am not good friends with Tony Fidel I don't know him I don't want to speak ill of him I feel like I'm also terrified of him. So please, Tony, don't hurt me. Glass needs some huge technological breakthrough, or it's just going to look dumb compared to, like, HoloLens and magically. I think that the plan is to forget that it existed, and they'll release a version that's, like, okay for doctors, and that'll

be the end of it. That was what was weird. The rumors coming out is that even under Fidel, it sounded like they were going to do a similar thing, like maybe for Enterprise, but it's, I mean, were they still going to work on a consumer version of Glass? Because it seemed like a totally failed product. They were going to work on like an enterprise version of it. Okay. That's the plan. Some kind of like, you know, your cable repair person will have one of these and they'll get schematics on it or something. The glass is special to me because it did not fail because of the technology. It was a failure socially. Right. It's just a weird thing that there was a only there had been a social backlash against a nascent device. If only there had been like a pure gadget blog. Yeah. Tell people why they should

care. I think it's weird that ATAP is in the Google hardware division and not part of Google X. I think that there's a big friction between like Google X and ATAP. Yeah, I mean, ATAB does, I mean, sometimes it makes products that can go to market, right? The, uh, the customizable phones, which I'm blanking on the name of. That's project are, uh, and it's like only sort of getting there. Right. Like that's been super delayed. Like that could be a legitimate consumer business. I understand that being part of Google. They're essentially just. Android phones. But then it's also making like connected fabric and stuff, which does not at all make sense inside of Google. That seems like why ATAP was separate or at least semi-separate

for a while. Well, the ATAP's thing is like we need to, within two years, we need to come up with an idea and then produce it at a convincing scale. And convincing scale is like this could be a product if we wanted it to be. And then if it fails, they walk away and do the next thing. It totally should be inside the X-Division, but like, I don't know, Astro hates them. I have no. idea. It's very weird. So much drama. I just think it's weird. This is a huge company that like all these people are fighting. I know people fight a company sometimes,

but this is weird. Well, I don't, I mean, they couldn't, maybe they're not, but I don't know. That's where it belongs, right? Axe is the place where they make self-driving cars and crazy kites that turn into windmills. Have you heard of the, I figure what it's called Project Wing, I think?

Or no, it's something else. Matari. I don't know. Anyway, you know how a windmill works, right? I'm waving my arms, Right? Imagine instead of... If you could continue to demonstrate. Instead of giant fans, there's just some string. And the string goes out and at the end of the string is a kite.

And then they just put 50 of those in a circle. And then those are the things that spin. And then that powers the windmill. So many tangles. That sounds like some like hippie BS. I know. What if we use kites instead of blades? The world would be way more peaceful.

Like, is that going to... Save them money? I don't get it. Well, you can, the kites can go way further out, you know, because I'm waving my arms again, because they can be further out than the fan of a blade, and so therefore they get more power. You can use wild colors to bring joy to viewers.

Energizing our souls. We're glad Google is doing this. But why is the vision that makes self-driving cars and crazy, like, internet drones and crazy internet balloons and self-delivery drones? Why are they separate from the part of the company that makes touch-sensitive fabric and little chips that can detect millimeter motion

above them so you can have touchless control of things and 3D sensing cameras. Why are those separate? All the things that you just named, aside from the fabric, but the touchless controls, that is something that would be great for a very serious hardware division. Right. Right.

Like think about the R&D that Apple does. Like they did 3D touch. They've got like the, I think we all have track pads now that don't click. but feel like they click. Oh, Nicholas trackpad clicks. Oh, I have a real click over here as well.

You got a real click. You know? Wait, why? My trackpad doesn't click. It only gives me the impression. Do you have to tap it? I hate that. No, you don't have to.

You can still push it. You push it, and you can select how resistive it is. You don't know about a forced-up track pad? Oh, it's so cool. So it's just a little squishy thing on it. And when you push on it, it detects the push, and then there's a little motor that, like, goes at you, and you feel the click.

Yeah. So you're not actually clicking a physical thing. it's clicking at you. Wow. Click back. How cool is that? They should have let me name it. Right, so there is.

It's way better than force touch, right? Click back. Click back. Click back. So there is, yeah, I think exactly. You have, even for Google Glass, you can see how, like, touchable material that has electronics in it could be interesting.

But yeah, they need to make products out of that stuff. They don't need to just hang out and play around. So maybe this hardware division will focus that energy into real product. So, okay, so what does, Google actually make hardware-wise. They make the pixel, the Pixel C, the Chromecast, the On Hub is made

by somebody else, the Nexus phones are made by somebody else. I guess they make glass. They make glass. You know, but like none of the stuff that, other than the Chromecast, another stuff that Google directly makes itself as like a huge massive smash success. Right. And the Chromecast, I mean... Chromecast is a huge success. Yeah, but it does nothing.

Like it's like one little thing, it's its cheap little plastic. Like that seems like the least hardware work possible for the them, which I guess is, right? Like, I don't know. I mean, what do you think that Google wants that of this hardware division? I don't know. They just, they consolidated everything and put, like, the former head of Motorola in charge of it.

So presumably they want to, I don't know, it's a former head of Motorola. So maybe they don't want to sell that much. Oh. I don't know. What do you think? Ah, man. I mean, Microsoft did the same thing, right? And then pissed off all of its hardware partners and then didn't get anywhere.

And I feel like. people aren't banging on the door to buy phones and stuff from Google. They just want a ton of options. And especially within Android, there are so many options there. The hardware that Google does have right now seems to exist entirely just to kind of nudge other hardware manufacturers in certain directions to say this is where we're going with the software. This is where we think the ecosystem as a whole should go.

And for the most part, it's worked. And also it's delivered some very good and cheap phones to huge nerds like us. which is great. And I don't want that to stop because I don't want to pay $700 for a galaxy. Right. But, yeah, I mean, I can't imagine Google just, like, ramping up a full scale. Like, we want these phones in every single carrier store. We're going to do a massive advertising.

I mean, I guess that would be a huge business if they could make that succeed. Yeah, that's kind of interesting. Like, your first question was, well, do they want to be profitable? And if Google decided to make a profitable hardware division that was less based on, this world domination with their own operating system, which some of their partners are already, you know, a lot of their partner, and Samsung especially, kind of toys around with, what if we did a different operating system, you know? If their partners wanted to do something else, Google could be an Apple and not have to be so,

I don't know. I feel like Apple is in this good position where they don't have to be as evil as Google. Google with their software because they can make profit off of hardware. Google only profits off of... Google only profits off of basically search an Android, right? Yeah, well, they... I guess there's also the fact that many countries seem to be concerned about the Google's requirements that Android phones ship with all of its different

apps and services. Should that come to pass that they have to pull back on that it might make sense as a backup to be selling its own phones that are obviously going to come preloaded with all of that stuff. That whole lawsuit, like the more I think about this lawsuit in Europe, the like stupider, I think it is. It's really dumb, right? It's a really competitive landscape right now.

People can do whatever they want. I want Google to piss off all its partners and get like another viable mobile operating system, just for my own joy. I mean, that's going to be hard. It's really hard to make another mobile. Okay, here's the thing. The thing that's going in Europe, the reason we don't have a problem with it is because we're like, wait, but stock Android is so good.

But imagine a world in which stock Android is not good, and Google apps are actually carrier bloatware, right? Like, would it be more competitive if actually Samsung could not include any of those apps and then just include its own apps? And then that was what people were used to, and that was the only stuff they were using. But Google literally. Then we have this Samsung ecosystem, too, built on top of Android. And then we have these competing ecosystems.

Could that be cooler? I don't know. It could be. But then again, we have that with fire. Yeah. With Amazon's fire tablets. They have their own store. Well, in my hypothetical world, it's working out much nice.

Oh, shit. We haven't talked about, like, the most important Google News of the week, which is Chromebooks are going to be able to run, like, any Android app. Pretty neat. Would you want to run an iPhone app on your MacBook? Yeah, I'm sure. So there's plenty of things I'd like to do on the computer instead of a phone. I mean, I hope that it happens, if only because it might make Android apps on tablets,

not garbage. All Android apps, not all. A bunch of Android apps, even Google's own apps, like Google Docs on a tablet, is not a good app. It's a terrible app. But if they can run them on Chromebooks, then all of a sudden it goes from, like, the 10 people who bought a Pixel C to the millions of school children who, are using Chromebooks and they'll have to make it better. I would hope.

I like this theory. You ran this by me before. I'm into it. Yeah. I mean, I think it's, I mean, I would love it for that to happen. It's really fascinating that Google is trying to scale Android from, like, it's very good and successful on phones, but, like, it hasn't worked on tablets yet. It worked on the Nexus 7.

That was in, like, 2012. Yeah, okay. We're still remembering the Glory Days in the Nexus 7. Yeah, I don't know. is going to a bigger screen size, really going to be the thing that saves them. But the other thing is these apps, you can still run them in their small little phone size

on a Chromebook, right? Yeah, I'm sure. And I would totally do that, too. Just, you know, like, when I look at my monitor right now, like Twitter is, like, a phone app, basically. Are there a lot of great Android apps that don't have great web apps? Instagram.

Okay. Instagram has a website. Yeah. Yeah, you can go to the website, But you can't take pictures. You can't add stuff to it. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, I don't know.

Games. Games. You don't play a game on your laptop, like a mobile game on your laptop? Yeah, why not? You know, like tap the screen to jump. Yeah, I'll do it. Just too wait. Play dots.

I play dots in a Chromebook. No, I mean, I definitely like the idea, though, because the thing is, like, Chromebooks right now, we still sort of think of the most of the things that are like, not quite there because they don't have real apps or just the web. But suddenly, if they can run Android apps, then we're building this, Well, I mean, are the Android apps running locally, or are they in the cloud somehow? TBD?

I mean, if they're in the cloud, that's crazy because then you have all of this. I mean, Google is just slowly, this is what I was thinking of earlier. You're talking about the death of the web now. Yeah. All right. So let me back up a second. So I was at Google's office earlier today, and they're showing this new HP Chromebook 13, and they were like, look how cool cloud, like, virtualized apps are through Citrix.

And I was like, snooze, this is boring. But here's the thing. So they had like, you know, PowerPoint up or whatever, and it was just like running like PowerPoint. And that's fine. I'm not going to set up a virtual server that's never going to happen. But imagine if all these Android apps are coming from the cloud as well. If that's the case, then you have this like basically shell of a computer that is able to do, you know, whatever because it's not running on a computer. And Google is like sort of like backdooring its way into this.

I feel like this has been this idea for a while. The thin client. The thin client. This is the dream of the 90s. This is the dream of the 70s? Yeah. Is the Chromebook it? Yeah.

Could be. Why not? Yeah. Which I think that would be really cool if that's what happens. If, you know, I don't know how well a Chromebook would run an Android app otherwise. I guess it would be functional. Yeah, it's really cool except that when you don't have good connectivity, it all goes to hell. Right.

Like, I know that's like a really basic argument, but it's still true. Connectivity is not perfect. Yeah. Yeah. It bugs me because the rise of the Chromebook coincides with, like, me learning. to program and starting to like love my terminal. Right. And like this idea that like I love just being at the low level of my computer and I'm a hacker.

I can change folders. I can copy files for one folder to another with the terminal. You can program and you can create your own software and you can run it all. Remember the first time you type Makedur? Oh yeah. So good. I love Makedur. You can touch a file.

I don't know. I mean that's happening. If you type if you go to your terminal right now and you type touch and then space and then the file, name, it creates an empty file of that name. Yeah. Just like to make one? Yeah, just to have a file. And if you type, with the power, with the power of your words, you create a digital

thing out of nothing. Okay, that's kind of interesting. If you type Vim, space, the file name, you'll open it up in a text editor that you will not know how to quit out of. And if you open up in EMAX, you will literally never be able to. What if you open it up in both Vim and Emacs at the same time? Your computer explodes. No, it'd be fine.

All right. It'd be fine. Yeah, it'd be fine. But the Chromebook, you can, like, hack them. They're running Linux, just like Android is running on Linux. And you can, like, hack them and have access to the real Linux. And I wish they were going more in that direction. I wish Google decided to make, like, a really great Linux distro.

Instead of, like, bolting Android onto, which is, like, my least favorite Google product, on to... Android is released very... Yeah, Chrome OS seems so clean to me. It's a browser, which is the most important thing. Have you seen the material design update? Yeah, I'm running Canary. I've got it on my Chrome browser.

It's not fully done yet. But yeah, I'm excited about that. That's fine. Yeah, it's fine. I don't know. I'm bouncing between Chrome and Safari right now, because Chrome is... Safari fun.

Dude, I'm using this... I'm using the last year's MacBook. It is slow as hell. It... Oh, yeah. All right. Okay, Apple. Next Apple Watch is going to have faster processor and cellular connectivity. So then what can you do? Make calls. Maybe make calls. Or I guess you get stuff when you're not.

Get data without your phone? Yeah. You could go for a run without having to have your phone also there to log. That would be nice because then you can listen to, maybe you can listen to music. Stream Apple music. This doesn't seem like you would have. They can barely do. battery life right now. Mine's dead right now. Yeah. Well, I mean, so everybody wrote their, like, one year of Apple Watch anniversary

articles, and we didn't write one, mostly because I, like, I had already gotten all of my complaints about the Apple Watch out, like, last month when I wrote that thing about if your watch takes more than three seconds to do something, you blew it. But, like, the basic attitude of literally everything I've read it, oh, so one year of the Apple Watch, what we think is, like, man, sold really well. Kind of sucks. Okay, but the problem, the problem is. isn't the hardware. I don't think the problem is the hardware at all. Unless it's the

battery size of the battery. I mean, the battery, I've, if it had a bigger battery, the screen could be on all the time. I mean, that's never been a problem for me. The screen is always on when I want to look at it. It's crazy. The battery lasts until the end of the day. Of course, the battery only lasts until the end of the day because I don't really use it. But, I mean, that, that is the problem. The problem is that Apple has not given me something that I can use beyond getting notifications. And that's all it's going to be just for notifications, that's cool, but like, make it the best our notification experience. Like, I don't know.

It's a terrible notification experience. Am I going to have to pay, like, Verizon to hook up my Apple Watch now? Yeah, maybe. Well, I'm not going to do that. AT&T lets you have the same number. They do charge an extra, like, $5, 10 bucks a month. I'm not paying $5 a month to have, like, connected Apple Watch. Like, that's not the new feature I want.

Like, the feature I want is something that makes it, like, actually work better. Yeah. Do you know what the buttons do and the knobs? I'm slow. Actually, I'm trying to give my Apple Watch a real second chance. I've been wearing it for a whole week. Okay. Straight. And yeah, we're kind of. How much? I don't know if they do. I know what they do. But like when I like go down to do something to it. Honestly, like I like it for workout stuff, like tracking things. I like to look at numbers when I'm done and be like, I did do that much. Like I took a bike ride and I was like, I wonder how fast my heart goes when I am riding a bike. Like, that's interesting to me.

But then, like, during the work day and stuff, I'm just always accidentally archiving emails that I don't want to do that. Right? Yeah. I actually spent most of this week untangling the relationship of Vogue and Apple, which really hinges on the Apple Watch

and will be on both of our websites tomorrow. Wrapped in the verge. With Kwame. And because the Met Ball is coming up, which Apple is sponsoring on Monday night. Yeah, give us a preview of what's going to happen on Monday. The annual fundraiser. is there for the costume institute, which is like the archival clothing department of the

Metropolitan Museum of Art here in New York, is having their yearly benefit. And it's this, like, crazy red carpet where celebrities from all genres will be there. Who's going to be there? Like your Beyonce's. Like your Beyonce's. She shot it down last year. It was like, Kim came, and then like a little while later, Rihanna came. And I was like, ooh. And then a little while later, Beyonce came, and it just was like, oh, and everything. And then whatever. But, so it's a huge red carpet, whatever, it's like big splashy. Like the most aspirational thing in pop culture, I think, right now. Okay.

Grander than the Oscars, grander than the Grammys, et cetera. And Apple is the sole sponsor this year, putting all the funding dollars behind, which would be many dollars, I assume. What does that sponsorship get it other than the, like, headlines Apple is sponsoring this thing? Yeah, so they get almost no say, but they get their little logo. on these things. But as I timelines obsessively, I think they got a lot more out of the deal than just

this, including like 12 consecutive ads a year ago in Vogue that should cost $190,000 per page. But I'm guessing they didn't have to pay for that. $190,000. Yeah, they got a couple different covers across like the franchise. They got a lot out of like whatever it is that they did broker.

But yeah, so then, so the big thing is on Monday night and it opens this exhibition that is loosely fashion and technology through the ages. But what it really is is like how machines and hands make clothes. So it's like super granular production. It's about like lace by hand, but then like the machine stitching. It's so, so reachy. And I really think it's because Apple was like, we want to do, we want to be part of this cultural experience. Like we want to be aligned with you. But we have to have the word tech in the name. Like I don't care what you do. just like please put tech in this year's exhibit.

And they were like, okay. That's better than like LED dresses. I mean, maybe that'll be there. No, I'm saying anything would be better than like LED light up dresses, right? Yeah, it's just going to be like, I've seen a preview of it. And we will have a video actually in The Verge too on Tuesday morning so you can check it out if you're not actually going to be able to make it to the museum. But I don't know.

It's going to be splashy, but like it's so, it's really, I'm curious. It's really weird to me. Are there like going to be Apple Watches there? Or it's, you're literally not going to know apples there? Yeah, I don't think you will. Huh. Okay. So they just, I mean, I guess it's over this past year you're saying.

They've gotten to be more associated with the fashion world because of this. So it's like ingraining them into it? I guess, yeah. It's just like trying to like be part of the culture. Basically like trying to buy into a world that they can't seem to get themselves into by them organically. And I kind of go into why Vogue wants to take that from them and vice versa. It's an interesting relationship that you have. Yeah, that's interesting.

So when Vogue decides to put an Apple Watch on its cover, I mean, you're thinking that that's something that they've explicitly worked out. Not like Vogue's like, oh my God, this is so. We have to have it. Well, I think there is a little bit from, like, I think Vogue is, they just announced an app today. It's their first app.

Why? Did you do that right now? I don't know. But they seem like very, like, fearful about technology and very frazzled and nervous. And it seems like Apple is kind of, of like the sexiest company that they could like manage aligning themselves with of all if you have to embrace this new world whatever I mean at the magazine like every editor there is over 50 and these

people and like not that 50 year olds can't be in touch of technology these are not in touch with so the minds that are making decisions there are like uninterested and like this stuff doesn't come naturally to them and you can tell throughout the whole franchise but also they have really loose advertorial vibes. Like things that are sponsored, there's this Kendall Jenner exclusive issue going out to subscribers only in New York and L.A. It's completely sponsored by Estee Lauder,

which Kendall Jenner is a face of, but they're saying it's not advertising. It's editorial. Everything's blurry over there. I just don't know who Apple needs to convince that they make cool things. Yeah, nobody. They need to convince that the Apple,

people that the Apple watch is cool. That's the thing, yeah. They haven't talked about phones at all in any of this phone stuff. It's pure watch. Right. Yeah. I mean, you don't think

that Apple's things are like less cool and less like aspirational than they used to be. I think that's dropped. Yeah, I mean. Rose gold, though. It's a color. It's a color.

It's a color. It's a color. Dusty salmon. Oh, my God. All right. Lightning Round. You ready? Oh, yeah.

You ready? Game of Thrones, season six, episode one. I don't watch it. Oh, girls is over. I don't, I don't watch it. Great lightning round. Santa's awesome. Tipping your Uber driver.

Fascinating. I only skimmed this, to be honest. And it seems like... Uber's real mad at us. Oh, really? Because we're like, look, if the drivers get to ask for tips, they're going to ask for tips, and if you don't tip them, they're going to give you a low rating,

and therefore you're going to go down. And it was like, no, no, it's totally voluntary. It's like, do you understand human nature? These people are trying to get paid. Right. Yeah, I don't know. I don't understand why. I mean, I could understand if they were like, oh, we're going to bake this into the cost

and then people would be angry because Uber costs more and it just started costing so much less. But asking for, it's like, and also the whole, who cares cash? Right. Yeah, Uber should just pay them more. I didn't read the article. Oh, God. I'm going to start using Lyft. If it becomes like a real genuine thing, like I'm switching to Lyft because they have a tip button in the app.

Right? I mean, that's the answer. Because I haven't used Lyft in a long time. You can just get in the back seat and not talk to them, right? Yeah. Especially in New York. You were supposed to get in the front seat and fist bump and be like, hey, let's chat. Oh, the mustache.

Oh, God. No. No. Wait, I don't want that at all. I'm so sorry for not reading this earlier. Yeah, you're a bad person. But is this saying that you don't tip them in the app, you have to have cash to tip them? That's ridiculous.

What's the point of Uber if you had to have cash? Yeah, I might as well, get me taxisies. Why do you think everyone was so angry? Okay, wow. Burn it to the ground. Switching the lift. All right, cool. Intel wants USBC to replace the headphone jack.

I agree. Headphone jack is great. Bring it back. It's never gone. It's not gone. It's going to go away. It's a tiny little thing. It's worked just fine.

We all have a million pairs of headphones. Leave it there. No. I don't know enough to care. Do you like having a headphone jack? Yes. Would you mind if all of a sudden, in order to listen to music,

you couldn't use that headphone jack? You had to use your lightning port? Like a new thing? That'd be annoying. Why are you so happy about it? I love, every time Apple's decided to destroy a plug, and not just Apple is trying to do this. Lots of people are interested right now.

Yeah. It's been great for society, I feel like. And it's USBC. Firewire. Yeah, lightning. Okay, fine. I just want to embrace the craziness that you can get, here's what I want.

Circuit Breaker's changed you. I want a phone that I plug my headphones into, and it charges my headphones. And then sometimes when I feel a little zayy, let's go get the, that later. If I feel a little zany. Unplugged my headphones. Oh, wait.

My headphones had electricity going to them this whole time. They're super charged up and now I can listen wirelessly and everything's great. I just think it's, I think it's going to be cool, new things that will happen because of this. Yeah, we probably should, if we want to be slow and special about it, we could we could have headphones that work off of USBC and also still have the headphone jack. But I think we got that. But I feel like the headphone is not causing any problems right now.

The iPhone isn't using USBC. The iPhone's using Lightning. Right, right. And so now it's like, not only will you have iPhone versus Android, you're going to have like, my head, can I borrow your headphones? No. Apple should move to USBC, and I would really love it if they would. Yeah, I agree. Okay, two more.

And then we got to go. Actually, no, I'm doing it. Lemonade. Cool. Yeah. I liked what she was underwater. The beginning. No, I mean, it is so visually cool.

But also, yeah, anyway. It's great. who has the time to watch an hour long album? I watched like five seconds. I was like, this looks really cool, but I gotta go to bed. I'm saving it for the weekend. You're insane. I signed up for HBO now and all of that jazz.

It did so much work to watch it when it. It was a lot of work. Was it worth it? I had to change passwords. I had to change payment methods. I had to use my phone and my computer and my TV to make it happen. And I did it and I watched and it was great. And I, as soon as,

ended, I was like, I don't envy anyone who has to write this think piece because it is a fuck ton to unpack. Yeah. Jameson's think piece. He did a pretty good job. Actually, think about him a lot when these things happen. I'm like, oh, Jameson, self-proclaimed media puppy has to handle this. I've actually been trying to avoid spoilers, which is a really weird thing to say about

this album event video thing. Yeah. Wait for the twist when she sings a ballad. Yeah, I don't know. What would the twist be? I don't know. Dude, you don't even know what happens in this. No, that's a real idea.

I'm not really a plot. Yeah, because it's kind of wild. I know there's a plot. I'm like no more than I should right now. I've been trying to... I don't want to spoil it for deets. I'm sorry for being still on culture. SpaceX, Mars, 2018.

I'm going. Cool. Cool. Follow Verge. You literally just said three things that sounded good. On Twitter, yeah. On Twitter, Reverge, on Snapchat Reverge, on Instagram Reverge. We also have Circuit Breaker, which you should definitely follow on Facebook.

Facebook.com slash Circuitbreaker. That's also on Twitter. other places as well. You can like us on iTunes. You really ought to. In addition to the Vergecast, there's also Control Walt Delete. There's What's Tech.

There's Verge ESP. Recode's got a bunch of podcasts. You show us all those. I was on What's Tech this week. Paul was on What's Tech this week. Talking about Circuit Breaker, probably more intelligently than I did about Circuit Breaker. More intelligently than when I spoke about Circuit Breaker earlier.

I don't think I did a, I didn't, I don't know. Fine. It was a great podcast. It's worth listening to, but if you want the most, the most precise definition of a gadget blog, which I attempt to give. I don't think I did a great job with that. But I love the conversation. I'm at Backlon, Nicola's, Nicola underscore Fumo, Paul, is future Paul. Jake is Jake underscore K? Yep. Yes. Thanks for watching everybody or listening or whatever you're doing in order to consume this content. We'll see you next time. Bye. Bye.

Paul.