The Vergecast - iPhone chips, Scorpio specs, and RIP NES Classic

Episode Date: April 14, 2017

This week on Vergecast, Chris Plante is in town! Nilay, Dieter, and Paul bring him in to discuss a few things that confused us all throughout the week — Apple and Qualcomm suing each other, how the FCC may kill net neutrality, and Nintendo discontinuing the NES Classic. There’s a lot more in between all that so take a listen, give us a review, and enjoy your weekend. 01:50 - The FCC’s plan to kill net neutrality will also kill internet privacy 16:59 - Qualcomm sues Apple for hobbling its iPhone chips to make Intel look better 33:12 - Microsoft reveals its final Xbox Project Scorpio specs 52:00 - Nintendo doesn’t want your money — it wants your soul 1:00:03 - Paul’s weekly segment “Guess who’s got a birthday coming up?” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast, theverge.com, a multi-sensory media experience. Sure. Mostly it's just the one sense. It's just the hearing sense. It's not the other ones. Theverge.com is a multi-sensory. Oh, yes. We're the hearing part of it.

We're the hearing part of it. Yeah, yeah. There's a visual. There's a distinct odor. What of intelligence and razor-sharp wit. Anyway, I'm Nealai Patel and the editor-in-chief of the verge. I got a whole crew in the studio with me today. This is great.

This is more humans together. Dieter is here. Hi. Do I sound better? Yeah. Let's go with it. Things are good. Paul is here.

Hello. Paul's usually here. So that's great. Most of the time. But Chris Plan is also here. Hi. What's up, man? Oh, nothing.

Just, you know, living my best life. Why do you sound? I'm laughing. If you're listening, we started. the pre-show by commenting on Chris's wonderful ability to say hello in a very, like, friendly and, like, disarming way. I don't know what you're talking about. Now he's refusing to do it.

Hello! Now he just sounds like Mork from Morg and Mindy. What? That's what I think you sounded about. How old are you? Yeah. What? That was a part of my youth.

Oh, wow. You don't like aliens? I don't know what you're talking about. J.K. I'm also old. Robin Williams. Yeah. Anyway, look.

It's going to get dark. No, it's a great show, but we're going to start boring. Okay. This is what I want in the audience, no. There's a lot to talk about. Stick around for Microsoft and Nintendo. Chris and Paul are fired up about Nintendo news. But you have to wait for it.

Now it's time for your vegetables. Yeah. I would like to start with internet policy and patent. Oh, no. Why am I here for every episode of this? It's because it's every episode. Oh, my gosh. I just want everybody to know that the other day, I worked for maybe 15 minutes on a tweet that was going to incorporate, you've got a friend in me, but make it friend.

And I did it. I did it pull it off. You couldn't get there. But that's the thing. That's what I do every day is I restrain myself on Twitter. Nobody had to see that. I don't do that. Here's the problem.

Okay. I spent, I would say, all of 2012 and 2013 writing about patents, smartphone patents. Then it was over. Apple and Samsung, I mean, that case is still going on. It was just in front of the Supreme Court. I mean, like, but it was like mostly over Apple One. You know, all the settlements started happening. And then they were just arguing about who's going to pay who.

But who cares, right? It's just dollars. That's like dollar amounts. It's not about the moral outrage of copying the iPhone. It's not that I was done. I was like, ah, I can write about some interesting stuff. Then the net neutrality fight happened, and I spent all of 2014 and 15 writing about internet policy, which I was, I thought it was fun because I was all fired up.

But then it was done. Net neutrality passed. It was done. I know Paul was sad, but I was happy, so that was cool for me. And I was like, great, we're going to write about something. Now it's 2017, and literally every day there is Apple versus. Qualcomm patent news or more net neutrality news. Wait, do you think you're being punished because he clearly didn't do anything during 2016?

Yeah, 2016, I just skated. I was wondering. Yeah, I just hung back. Maybe this is like a desperate plea by the tech industry for more opinion pieces by Eli Patel. That's what they want. So the net neutrality stuff is like, it's basically just news updates, so we can do it real fast. So the Internet Association, which represents Google, Facebook, Netflix, a bunch of other companies, sat down in front of the chairman of the FCC Ajit Pi and said, don't screw this up.

We need net neutrality or businesses depend on it. We know that you generally side of the telcos, Verizon, Comcast, whatever, but don't screw it up. But they backed off. They don't care if it's Title II or not. It's like four things. They want no paid prioritization. They want no blocking. They want the FCC to stay in charge of it.

There's something else. But it's basically a capitulation. We know that you're going to screw this up. We're backing away from the thing that we wanted. We won. But don't mess with it. So that's like one big piece of news. Yeah.

So if you're hoping that, you know, Netflix, Google, Apple, Amazon, whoever is in this association, are like going to be your net neutrality champion because they wrote a letter and they don't like what the, you know, what Ajapai wants to do. Like, they're not actually asking for, much. Yeah.

Then, so that's like the most recent thing that happened. But then over the past, I don't know, four days, Pi has been like taking these meetings. So he met with the big companies, but he also met with the telecom companies. And he basically laid out a plan. And if you pay attention to like how news happens, that meeting and the plan laid out in it was leaked in almost exact fashion

to like three different. new services. Almost like it was supposed to happen in the way. Almost like a coordinated release of information happened. And the plan is insane. Like I just, I just want to put this out. You can have a plan. I think that's fine. But his plan is we'll get rid of net neutrality in the law. And then I'll get the internet providers of America to put the rules in their terms of service agreements. And then everything will be fun. Now, I confess. I don't know as much about this as really anybody in this room. But I read your article about it. I have a different opinion.

Yeah. Only because, so like some people like read books and other people like enjoy watching streaming shows. All of my free time is spent reading Terms of Service. So like for somebody like me, this is big. I'm going to be reading terms of service. I'm going to be reading terms of service, I'm going to have so much to read forever. And the good news is when you're reading iTunes to read the new terms of service. When you're reading the terms of service and you come across something from your internet provider that you don't like, you've got like six or seven other internet providers that you could choose to give your money for high-speed access to because there's real

genuine competition for high-speed internet access. And so you can just pick whichever one has the best terms of service. That's how that's going to work. That's great. Now you hurt me. Now you're talking about how I'm still stuck with time more. And there's even a good local one in Austin. But they stop like three blocks away from the house.

Are you kidding? It's so good. Go Monoprice get like a 200-foot Ethernet table. Oh, this is a good idea. Pringlecans. This is Monoprises new business. Oh, I am like, you joke, but like... They stand at the border of the good internet company.

Everybody in the neighborhood's going to be on the neighborhood Facebook being like, What's up with this new Ethernet port running through all our yards? I'm like, shh, don't nobody say anything. Anyway, but that's his plan. The plan, like, all I'm saying is most people don't read these terms of service agreements. We have covered so many times when, like, Instagram changes its terms of service agreement, and then there's, like, outrage. And people do insane things because they don't understand them.

But then Instagram or Facebook or Twitter, whatever, never actually change it. The outrage will happen. There's a hashtag campaign, various Kardashians get involved, and Instagram's like, what are you going to do? Do you're going to stop using Instagram? And everyone's like, no, we're just going to be annoying on it for a couple days. And then they don't change it. So it's not like terms of, even when there is like competition, they don't change.

So this is the plan. And it just seems like, oh, and if you start a new internet company, which is Pye's whole thing. That's his idealistic vision. I'm going to reduce all the regulations. We're going to make it so you can make more money on networks that will provide incentives for people to start more networks. I mean, idealistically, that's what he wants. And that's as a policy is fine.

But if you start a new internet company, why do you have to follow the rules? So it's just a very confusing moment in terms of policymaking. He's like, I'm going to say everyone should make this promise. And then everyone will, which doesn't make any sense. And then everyone who comes after me for generations will know to make this promise. Let me know, am I understanding your read on this right? Your idea would be like, okay, the law of the land is don't murder fools. Yeah.

But what if somebody was like, I don't like it as a law, but what if don't murder fools was just like the terms of service for going into Walmart in every other place? It's more like, I mean, literally this comes down to like the philosophic basis for law. Like, should there only be norms in a society or should there be codified law? Well, I mean, I stand with Hamrabi on that one. Right. It's like very confusing. But this isn't law, this is regulation. Laws are regulations.

There's a regulation in this country against killing people. There's a regulation in every state. Except for the one day of the year, that is. It'll be purge. But on that day, net neutrality is the law. And the bridge is the law. It keeps you inside because you can just download all the stuff without prioritization. But if you go outside, you get purged.

When you put it like that, it doesn't sound so bad. There's no difference between a law and a regular. It's a nonsensical definition. The way that it has been implemented and that we've arrived at this, like the whole problem in the back and forth and this weirdness of the C's, and the FTC and the reason Congress had to try to change what the privacy thing is and like all this work and movement around is because the FCC, a regulatory agency that was set up by Congress, decided to expand its power and scope by reclassifying something. No, but that's its power. Yeah.

But that is the power that it has. It used the scope that was, we don't need to relitigate this. Although we're not actually talking about laws here. We're talking about the velocity, so we're not going to litigate it. The fundamental question that the head of the FCC is asking America is, do you think there should be laws or should we all just make promises to each other and assume it'll be fine? Should the internet work how it worked before it was reclassified, which seemed to be doing pretty good, or should we keep trying to fix the problems that have been brought up by this? Or do we take the norms and turn them into laws? Title II is like, hey, you are now protect a monopolies.

The FTC has no oversight over you. And now the FCC has to figure out how to be the FTC for Internet companies. Well, I disagree on that part. But I think the Title II debate was all about, was about, do we take the norms for how the Internet has been working, recognize that access competition is low, and turn those norms into laws? And I would also, I also disagree with you on, like, this. The internet was fine before Title II. We were heading down a bad path and then we turned off and now we're like back on the freeway.

Sure. We like took an exit to like McDonald's and like had a really nice Sunday. And then now we're getting back on the road to hell. Sorry, do you get to murder people at this McDonald's? Yeah. The purge McDonald's. I will say. Can I say this?

But that's, but I would say for our tech podcast to now be at the level of should we trust the internet companies to follow norms in the absence of competition or should there be laws is crazy town right like now we're having a legal like a legal philosophy debate I mean we have it we don't all agree on that no we don't all agree but it's just that's where we are in terms of the net neutrality fight yeah I mean I will say this one I like it I like the debate yeah but two I like I like that Paul is here like I love talking about no I know but like we hear this debate and I always like whenever I and I'm like, poor Paul, but also brave Paul. Because to like come into a room and be the other side,

it seems like with this debate in our community, there isn't the other side. Paul is the only person who routinely advocates for the other side who I don't believe is crazy. I've met a lot of the other people and they're all either paid for by telecom companies. Paul. Disclaimer. I was one time. employed by an internet service provider of sorts. Yes.

But it was a good one. Also, Comcast invested in a company, so in a sense... No, that's not true. Okay, I take it back. It's not true at our company. Well, they're invested in our parent company. That's the disclosure... Comcast has money everywhere.

They do not pay us. They don't pay us. Certainly Comcast is not paying for my personal coverage of this issue. Full disclosure. They're not getting their money's worth. Full disclosure. I do have a choice between Fios and... optimum at my current apartment.

Yeah. So Paul is living the life. Because every day he's calling the Fios people and he's like he would change those terms of service. Make me a deal. I'm going optimum. Anyway, that's where we are with that. There's no like big news. I just wanted to point out that literally the

window of the conversation is not necessarily about the policy right now. Because Pi wants the policy to exist. He wants the place the internet is now without paid prioritization and blocking and all that stuff. He's fine with that. He just thinks the rules should be gone formally. And he thinks the Internet service providers should promise their customers, they won't do it.

Because this is so complicated of how it will actually go down to government, and that's hard for me to follow all the time. I'll just make my stance clear, which I think been fairly consistent, is that I love net neutrality as a norm, as a good, I think, business plan and as a good way to work, but I don't think the government should force a company to adhere to it. Right. And I think other, like, reasonable laws like don't spy on your customers can be applied to internet companies in the same way that they're applied to other companies. So, I mean, that's basically where I'm at. I'm not, it's funny because it's not even that, like, gets me.

idea that you can get Comcast in AT&T and Verizon and Spectrum and RCN and my tiny little cable company in upstate New York, Mid Hudson Cable, in a room, and have them all agree to the same language in their term of service provision. That is just like hopelessly idealistic. It sounds like an end around. Yeah. It doesn't seem like the right choice. End rounding.

Yeah. It does sound like an end around. Yeah. Whatever that is. Whatever that doomed idea. But that's where we're at that. Okay. We're going to do one more quick boring thing.

No, go ahead. I love boring stuff. I'm already asleep. I know it's boring, but to me... No, to like our listeners, and they're the people I care about. Well, they're just in their cars, driving along the road. Doing it for you. Yeah.

The road, which I would point out, is heavily regulated by the government. Not when you pull off the murder McDonald's, though, and get yourself a little ice cream sauce. ...mere private murder road. Or you could go on the for-profit toll highway, which is a market. much faster way to get from Colorado Spring to the Denver Air. Can I just briefly say that the stock pixels call

thing is getting better and better? I had a call earlier today that was like potential spam and I was like, I don't have to answer that. If you're in your car. Just rang and my whole screen turned like bright, bright danger red and it just said survey. I'm not

answering that either. It's great. It's funny that they picked red because what if it's like Russia? What if it's like only you can stop it? You're like, oh, red, that must be a survey. No bombs today, thanks. Survey should be, Bob? Well, he didn't answer.

Anyway, the other thing that's happening, and I just want to point out, because I think it's huge and it's so complicated that I've spent three days trying to figure out exactly what's happening, and I can't. I'm still working it through. Apple sued Qualcomm. Qualcomm sued Apple back. They just filed their lawsuit a couple days ago.

The FTC also sued Qualcomm a while back. They did it in the last weeks of the Obama administration. I was tweeting, I was reading all the filings. I was tweeting about them. Qualcomm's general counsel called me on the phone to yell at me. Apple and Qualcomm hate each other. I didn't know that before. They hate each other.

Oh, deep. How could you- Not. No, no, no, no. Apple is like one on Qualcomm's biggest customers. They shouldn't hate each other.

They should just be making piles of money together. They are making piles of money together. We can still hate each other. And they're arguing over who gets to, like, push the piles around. Apple in its patent filing described Qualcomm's business

as a scheme of relentless extortion, which is crazy. Yeah. So Qualcomm has all these patents on CDMA chips, on the CDMA technology. they basically invented that stack that Verizon runs on, Verizon 3G runs on.

They invented a ton of the LTE stack, so they have a bunch of patents on LTE. They make some of the only modems that can go fast enough. They sell the modems to Apple, but they don't license the patents to Apple. They license the patents to Apple's contract manufacturers like Pegatron and Foxxon. I did not know about that.

Which is insanity. The FTC sued Qualcomm and said, this is really wonky. Just go with me on this. Are you going to say, are you guys Fran? Not fran. Not franned. Is it fran time?

Not friend yet. Yeah, I made a fran reference really early in the podcast. Wait, wait, wait, wait. You got a friend. There it is. That's the same. But I'm waiting for the payoff.

Okay, I'll do the payoff first. I'll do the payoff first. It's literally like a throwback. We've done this on this podcast. I know. We should just find all the old fran podcasts. If you contribute to the standard, everyone recognizes that you, the point of the standards, everyone can make stuff that connects to the standard, right?

That's why I have a standard. But if you invented the standard, then you have a ton of control, and you get to make money from the standard. So there's rules. The standards organization say, well, if you're going to contribute patents to the standard or technologies that are patented to the standard, you have to license your patents to everybody on fair, reasonable, non-discriminatory terms. France. France. Fair.

No, it's easier to remember. Fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory. Yes, as in like Fran Dresher, who is deeply likable and treats everybody equally. Yeah. It's easier to remember. She never scurrayshare. The nanny. Yeah, the nanny.

You're a nanny terms. That's Fran Dresher doing these things. Wow, nanny state, am I right? Oh my God. Anyway, the FTC sued Qualcomm because Qualcomm under the patent, the doctrine of patent exhaustion, when they sell you the chips, the money has been made. They've already made the patent and stuff, and they made the money on it. They can't demand a license to the patents. Yeah, because they sold you this thing.

You have the stuff. Just like when you buy a car. as a consumer, the car's full of patented stuff, where you buy a phone. The phone's full of patent and stuff. You don't then need a patent license to use the thing. The FTC says, well, you have this policy where you demand a license to sell the chips.

That's illegal. So the FTC sues them. Apple sues them, saying, scheme of relentless extortion because of this thing. I'm like, oh, see, FTC is right. They had that idea all on their own. And we're going to sue you, too. Qualcomm sues Appleback says,

you've been illegally goading governments around the world into suing us for unfair competition practices against violating an agreement we have with you, Apple, literally titled the cooperation agreement. It's true. I always get a cooperation agreement. And then this is why the General Counsel of Calcom called me. They snuck in one more claim, which is insanity, but I think they did it to get headlines and said, well, when the iPhone 7 came out, some of them,

the ones at AT&T and the unlocked ones, had Intel modems, the GSM ones, basically. And the ones for Verizon had Qualcomm modems, which Apple Switch suppliers. Why they switched suppliers? Cooperation agreement ended. See, I'm getting all worked out. Also, they didn't happen to have sued Qualcomm

until they switched suppliers. Isn't that weird? Yeah, it's funny. It's funny. DERA Cooperation Agreement is about to come to do it. So Apple, when they put out the thing, people discover they have two modems. Bloomberg says, are there any differences in these modems? Apple said that there's no discernible difference.

We've done tons of tests. They should be the same. They say they are the same. There's no discernible difference. They do not use the word should. Then people actually do the test. Qualcomm modem has been capped. So it's much faster the Intel modem, but Apple's software limited it to make it seem like the Intel modem.

They put a governor on it. But it's still so much better that it's. particularly at low network connectivity levels, it's better. So there's just a better thing. Qualcomm, in its lawsuit, this big multifaceted lawsuit says, well, you harmed consumers by lying about our modem. And if you had told the truth about how much better our modem was in the iPhone 7, consumers would have demanded the superior Qualcomm product.

So Qualcomm is creating a class action for consumers, right? Customers would have demanded the superior Qualcomm product, and then we would have made more money. We would have made more money, which is insane, just insane. Insane. But they hate each other. Like I have never heard these two. Like, even Apple and Samsung hated each other, but Apple would be like, you know,

Samsung's a valet supplier. We just want them to stop copying. Here they're like, we hate you. Like straight up, we hate you. We don't want to use your stuff. We want to switch to Intel. We don't want to pay these license fees. We hate it all.

And Qualcomm's like, Apple is running around the world lying to people about us. That is their claim. Did you hear what he said about? Literally, these claims are so complicated that they involve the Chinese government suing Qualcomm. I'm sorry, the Korean government suing Qualcomm statements Apple made to the Korean trade regulator in response to questions. And Qualcomm says their agreements with Apple supersede Apple's obligations to respond to the Korean government. Oh, my God. That's amazing.

Then Qualcomm and Mazu are involved in some litigation in China. And Apple respond to some of that. Qualcomm is like, you breached our agreement because you are involved in this Mazur litigation. Apple says none of your patents even are valid because you put them up in this other Chinese lawsuit so they're not valid. It's bonkers. I have a general, like a knee-jerk dislike and skepticism of software patents. Yeah.

I will say, looking into how LTE works, it is not simple. Is it not simple? It is, it is like basically, I mean, if you imagine, like, imagine in the simplest model of how radios work, they're just waves and they're bouncing everywhere. Yeah. And these phones are decoding one for me right now, one for Dieter, one for you, one for Chris. like they are doing so much processing it's absurd and it's like like it's like hacking the Germans every five seconds the enigma yeah yeah weird time to go to the Germans literally only country not involved in this last yet we'll get there yeah they'll get there

no you're right it's like the it's literally the state of the art it's not easy to do Qualcomm did invent a bunch of it. Right. There's pages and pages in their filing. I just don't know how I'm rooting for. The detail the wonky invention of CDMA. Right. Which is fun to read if you're into it.

Apple, so first of all, the tooth, like, outside of all the details, going back to what we said at the beginning, this seems like these two companies are just making unbelievable piles of money, and then they have big giant sticks that they use to push the money around between each other and, like, divvy it up a little bit. There's a charm. And then there was a little bit of pushing and shoving on the sticks and, like, Qualcomm like, reached over and pulled over an extra bag of money. And now they're just hitting each other with the sticks. And that's what's happening. Yeah. I mean, literally, there's a chart in Apple's filing, which I love because it's so confusing.

And Apple, it's, like, under the heading of this chart illustrates the scheme of relentless extortion. And it's just, like, the Apple logo and a Qualcomm logo and, like, circuit. circular arrows, like between them, and then lines down between, and then boxes that say things like rebate equals dollar signs. Oh, no, that's better. It's a lot of like, like, SQA. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just as it boils down to, Apple went to Qualcomm and said, hey, you're double dipping. And then Qualcomm went to Apple and said, you weren't supposed to tell anybody we're double dipping.

Basically. And now they're, and that's, those are the lawsuits. One of the basic claims against Qualcomm is that they would charge manufacturers a license fee even when they weren't using Qualcomm. Right. So no other company can make as many modems as Qualcomm, right? Or as high-performing modems of Qualcomm. So at the top end of the industry, you're kind of locked into Qualcomm's modem.

Unless you're Apple and you buy Qualcomm's modem and decrease its performance. So you can also use the Intel modem. So Qualcomm knows that. They, with all the manufacturers, like Foxconn has a license to Qualcomm's patents. So they're paying that license fee, whether they ship the Qualcomm chip or they ship the Intel chip. Oh, here's nothing I didn't know. Apple buys the phones from Foxcon. So we think of Foxcon is like the company that puts the things together.

No, no, no, Apple buys each phone from Foxcon, which I never understand. Yeah, that's so weird. Yeah, it's just like a weird little fact that's buried in these lawsuits. But if Foxconn uses Intel chips, they still have to pay the license, even though Intel probably already pay the license, and even though Qualcomm didn't do anything. I have a question. So there was a quote, and if they don't pay the license, they can't get

Qualcomm chips. So there's a lot of this double-dipping. And so Apple got mad, and the rebate equals dollar sign is, they said, well, this is stupid, and Qualcomm said, well, if you agree to just use our chips, we'll just rebate you the royalty fees that you're paying. So Apple pays the money to Foxcon, Foxcom pays the money to Qualcomm, Quacom pays the money

back to Apple, which is insanity. I've got to get in that loop. Meanwhile, they just settled with Blackberry and Qualcomm is paying Blackberry 880 million dollars. 800 million dollars. BlackBerry probably made more money off of Qualcomm

being bad at patents than they did on actually selling phones. It's unclear what specifically the complaint was there because it was in arbitration. Yeah. And it's Canadian law, which we all know is based on politeness. And apologizing. So there's a line that you

tweeted from Qualcomm that It was like, our fees are totally reasonable. They're, like, substantially less. I forget the exact word. Per phone, they're less than an iPhone case. That's a lot of money. A lot. They said a lot less or substantially less, right?

Than a plastic iPhone case. Not even one of your fancy leather cases. So that's, like, $30? Yeah. Right? So what, do, does anybody know what we're talking? Like, if I buy a $700 iPhone, how much of that was? Oh, this is another thing.

A Qualcomm. Man, I am so deep. in this hole and I said it was boring and I said it'd be fast but we're just deep in the hole. We're going to get to that Nintendo stuff. No, no, no, no. Thanks for coming on the show, Chris. Qualcomm's fees are based on the consumer selling price of the phone, which is crazy.

At least Apple says it's crazy. I also think it's a little crazy. But if you buy a 64 gig iPhone, Apple pays less in patent royalties to Qualcomm than if you buy 128 gig phone. But they have the same modem. They have the same part in it. This is amazing. Right? If you buy a $100, like, prepaid LTE phone, Qualcomm gets less money, even though, like, generalize the same part. And fundamentally, they're using the same patents.

Yeah. So Apple's like, this is insanity. Like, as a price of our phone goes up, as we invent more stuff and, like, put more stuff in the modem. Right. Or in the phone. Oh, that's the other thing. The other thing that's in Qualcomm suit is they, like, they basically, like, took credit for, like, Snapchat. Yeah. Yeah. But that's like everybody does that. They're like, we made the internet. So Snapchat, you belong to us. This kind of just sounds like, do you remember that time that the Terminator made all that money off the Terminator? Like when Arnold Schwarzenegger made more money than Terminator 3, I think it was? Whichever, like, the one where he came back. And it happened and like all of Hollywood looked at the contract.

And they were like, oh, it turns out the entire system doesn't make sense. And all it took was like a really good. agent slash contract writer to like see through the bull crud and like be like oh I could just exploit this and then make a ton of money and then Schwarzenegger like made a ton of money and then everybody learned and then they like didn't make that mistake again this sounds like that it sounds like somebody was really really good at contract writing and now people are stuck in it? It's like that except the only actor on the planet is our own

Schwarzenegger. Yeah, yeah, 100%. It sounds like there's a really good contract and now people are like, Jean-Hod Van Dam is like, I sell slower modems. Yeah, Intel Jean-Claude Van Damme, Intel's like Paul Rudd. Wow. I love Paul Rudd. Yeah, everybody likes Paul Rudd. Paul Rudd's really nice. That's an Ant-Man. Yes,

Schwartz. It's a Terminator versus Ant-Man is what you've just set up. That's about right. Yeah. I mean, he's not best known for Ant-Man. Oh my gosh. He's best known for the fit he throws in Wet Hot American Summer.

Yeah. That's the most important, Paul Rudd. I mean, I would pay him at least like two iPhone cases worth just to keep that floating around in my brain. What is the secret

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This is a bunch of Microsoft stuff. They had already given us, like, final specs on what Project Scorpio, their next console, is going to be. And then we saw what the dev kit looks like, which looks like a really tall Xbox 1S. And then... But it's got those, like, buttons on the front. It's got some buttons, and it tells you your frame rate. Got a display. That's what I want.

Yeah. And then they finally announced when they're going to announce it and, like, show us the console. and it's at 83. Yeah. Yeah. That's not too surprising. Yeah. That's like a little surprising.

Is Xbox, are they still in the game? We've written a couple things like the PS4 so far ahead. I have some theories about what I think is going to happen. I think they have to have a like, oh, and by the way, it does this thing. Like that was kind of their thing with Xbox One originally, right? Like they were so caught up in them, by the way, that they kind of forgot to talk to about the games when they launched it. But they're like, they started with like, by the way, you plug in your cable to it because

we know that you love cable. And in like this dyed kind of connects your cable. And like down the road, we would like it to connect your streaming apps, which is like this like unicorn everybody's been chasing ever since. Yeah, we wrote a whole feature about this. Yeah. And like, no, good luck. That's not going to happen anytime soon.

So they've like, it seems like giving up on that, right? Absolutely. All those people are gone. So about a year and a half ago, I went over there and met with him and I was like, hey, what's your plan? And they gave me this whole spiel about like, we're going to be releasing incremental hardware. That was one part. Yeah. And they've done that, by the way.

They put up the one ass. They put the one out. Yeah, yeah. They're doing a good job of putting out a console almost every year or every year for the hell of it. Yeah. And really, Scorpio may be like the first version. I would not be surprised if maybe even something like that. a more modular happened even further down the line.

And we'll see. But the other thing they said was, hey, like, people love Xbox. At least they did before the Xbox one. And, like, people don't really have such warm feelings about Windows. Ironically, in the kind of, like, 14 months since this, I think that's kind of the opposite. But they were kind of viving in that at the time. And they were like, we're going to really start bringing Windows and Xbox together. So, like, you'll be able to buy some games on Xbox.

and they'll just play on your Windows device and Xbox anywhere. Like Windows 10, it works on everything. Your Xbox is kind of like Windows 10. And I would not be surprised if the big like, oh, by the way, is, oh, by the way, plug a keyboard into this,

and it's a computer. Yeah, it's like the ultimate steam machine. And this is just a PC now. If you spend a little bit more money, and hey, are you a college kid going off to school? get this, you're going to have the best games and also it runs word.

And that's so boring and it's such a Microsoft thing to think that everybody, like, they're going to say it at like E3 and like they're going to be like you don't like turn around and look at the teleprompter and it's going to say hold for the biggest applause ever

but it's just going to be like quiet in the room. But like I think that has to be the end goal is like them bringing Xbox becoming a platform. There already is a platform. No, but I mean like Xbox becoming

Steam. That's what they want. That's what they want. And it's not a bad idea. Because is Sony going to win this like console area? Yeah. Like good luck catching up. And that's like not I think the big reason that is

is Sony like won got really lucky and the exclusives that it decided to make actually shipped, and Microsoft did cancel a large number of theirs, and we'll save the very niche reasons why that might have been.

But the other thing is, like, Sony took Microsoft's Playbook that was brilliant from the Xbox 360 era, which was, hey, if your friend has the console, you're probably going to buy that one. So, don't worry about spending money on, you know, DLC exclusives, get

like that multiplayer map two months early. And they like spent it in so many places, number one being destiny. And now they like ended up taking the call of duty thing, which Microsoft had held on to for so long. They have Destiny 2 coming up. And like, that's how you win this generation. A whole bunch of people bought PlayStation's early and a whole bunch of people are going to continue to buy PlayStation. Even if they're not the most powerful console, because where are you going to play with your friends? Yeah. So like, you can't get behind in these generations anymore. But that said, as we move away from consoles and we move into this idea of platforms, the best place

to be will probably be the place that lets you own your games in perpetuity, and they get better every year if you want to spend more and more money on it, and they work on pretty much everything you own, and that is where Microsoft has its strengths. Like, Sony won't be able to compete there. So did Sony, like, crush them this era? It doesn't certainly, in 2017, will it be like, wow, Sony really blew them out, at least in the first half, like, it was rough. But, like, I have a feeling that at the very high offices of Microsoft, I'm sure there's some sense of, like, this is embarrassing for us, but, like, our plan is, like, such a,

like, six to seven year plan right now. Like, we don't even need to, we're so invested in the long game that we can cancel these games. Like, it doesn't matter if they don't come out. I don't even know how honestly interested they are in first party stuff. The fact they canceled so much stuff and they only have like three games announced right now. What are they canceled?

Oh my gosh. I'm trying to remember them. Well, they started Project Spark and they canceled that. They had scale bound. Do you remember this? It was a GRP and they canceled this game. I think this Steam comparison is really interesting

because of all the stuff Microsoft's doing for backwards compatibility. And I know that's something that is a real big, like, win with PC games. Because I have a Steam library, and some of those games I bought, like, I don't know, five years ago or longer, and they still work. Yeah. And it's really easy. You just go to your games library and you click on it, and then it downloads, and then you play it. It's just like, I mean, it sounds like really obvious, but that's not really how consoles have been.

It's like, well, I want to play. play PS3 game. Yeah. Well, I have to unplug the PS4 from the HTML and then I have to plug the PS3 in. And I have to go to my old shoebox that has the PS3 games in it. You know, like, so if Microsoft could do Steam, that would be great. They also are doing a lot, like the new Windows 10 creators update. They're like really into this Xbox.

But there's a bunch of people in like the games industry that see very clearly that this is what Microsoft wants to do and like be Steam. and they're like, oh, so they want to control everything. Everything will die. Microsoft will be in charge because they have really bad policies on their Windows store. And so say goodbye to your future as a freedom-loving video game player because we just all live in Satchez's house now. Isn't it Tim Sweeney from, no, who is it? Who's the guy at Epic? Yeah, he's the one of, like, channeling right now.

Just freaked out about that. Yeah. I mean, but Steam already is that guy. Yeah. What would be amazing? Well, what you want is Steam to change its terms of service, and then you compare them directly to Microsoft's terms of service. I want to install steam on my Scorpio right next to my copy of Word. Chris Plant, please do this for me.

That is the thing I'm curious about is. So I think this word idea, I don't think they care about running Word. They're not going to tell College Street you can run Word on your Xbox. Like, college kids have you met Microsoft. I don't think you get this. Have you met an 18-year-old trying to convince his parents to buy him? Yeah. They have a word on our TV.

They have laptops. They have phones. Use word on your phone. You can do that now. Yeah. All your paper is going to be terrible. Got it. What they need is all the ancillary media apps.

Because I think they still want to do this, like, home media center thing. They want to increase the base of that Windows store. They want apps. Oh, yeah. I think you're right there. I don't know if I'm convinced that they still think they're the center of the home. Well, I think it's both in a weird way. I think they're just, I think they think everything is a computer.

I feel like they got away from their safe place, which is like PCs, and they're like, what did we do wrong? What do we know? PCs? Put PCs in the living room. And they're like, oh, now we're cooking with gas. So, by the way, your steam on Scorpio Dream isn't going to happen, and it's related to, I think, the May 2nd event

where Microsoft is expected to focus on education and on this thing that Tom Warren has been writing about called Windows 10 Cloud. It's Windows 10 in the Cloud. I don't know if you know about the cloud. I've heard of the Cloud. I'm just saying if the Xbox is just, hey, look, it's just Windows. It's not going to be just Windows like you know Windows.

It's going to be just Windows that runs, Windows Store apps. It's going to be the next generation of WinRT. I was going to make a different WinRT job. Because that's worked so well for them so far. They haven't had WindowsRT. Have you met Microsoft? This entire conversation boils down to one of us

recognizing that this idea doesn't work. And then everyone else realizing. We actually don't have time for me to get into it, but I actually I'm wildly fascinated by Windows 10 Cloud. So the thing is there's this big argument. I'm going to write I'm going to write it. We can't, we can't waste out of the podcast. Okay, well, you now have a deadline.

You're published it by tomorrow. Wow. Because people can't, they're not going to hear the podcast. Well, I guess we're not going out for a drink tonight then. But I really want him to. Tell me, tell me. I'll write it for a while. Here's a hand.

Just give me a verbal tweet. Here's a hint. A verbal tweet. You can get a really, really, really good computer that, like, feels amazing and fast for around $500. If you buy one that runs Chrome OS, it will run native Android apps pretty soon. And it runs Chrome, which runs really good web apps.

If you buy one called an iPad, it doesn't have as many good education things as Chrome OS, but it has way better apps. It's not as good multitasking, but maybe they could fix that. If you want to buy a Windows PC in that zone, you're fucked. but not if they actually manage to successfully get Windows 10 cloud to happen. And so all of the action, all of the action in computers that aren't phones right now are, can we make an operating system that hits the sweet spot of like lightweight, fast, and runs just enough apps

and is just powerful enough to do stuff to make you like think of it as a full computer and put it on hardware that runs on an arm processor that costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 to $500. And the argument underneath it, the data point underneath it is depending on how you measure the PC market grew the PC market. The PC market grew because of Chromebooks.

Yeah. So here's the other thing I find interesting about this theory in relation to Microsoft. It's fact, by the fact. Yeah, full fact. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm talking about it with Xbox. Facts are kind of like theories. Yeah.

Welcome to 2017. There's just like terms of service that we all agree on. Yeah. That's what reality is. As gentlemen, we agree not to prioritize one another's traffic. So, a problem with the Xbox when it came out, right? It was a double whammy. They were like, hey, it's a video game console. Oh, I thought you were referring to the dimensions of the size of the box.

It was a double whammy by triple whammy. It was a double by triple. was, so they're like, oh, it's a game machine, but also we want you to be able to run apps at the exact same time. So essentially you're running two OSs. It was three. Oh, well, there's three. Yeah, they had the OS that controlled the other OSSys.

Yes. Yeah. And the fourth thing of, oh, we really love Connect. Oh, also like, Connect still doesn't quite run on its own processing power. Yeah. So, like, it's bleeding, bleeding, bleeding. If what you're talking about is cloud-based... Well, I think the cloud.

Cloud is like a head fake. Sure. It's Windows 10 for cloud services. What I'm saying is if it lightens the load, plus Project Scorpio is already more powerful, that frees up a lot for Xbox one. Basically, like, Chrome OS works because web apps are good. Yes. For the most part.

I see what you're saying. And so Windows is going to say, you don't need all this processing power and all this, like, hefty Windows stuff on these thin clients. It's all in the cloud. And so that's their move. instead of talking about Windows apps and WinterT and blah, blah, blah, blah, and going after the iPad, they're talking about cloud to go after Chrome. Yeah. I see what you're saying.

Yeah. I mean, my big thing is, I don't know if it's now. I don't know if it's the thing after Scorpio, but I don't think there's a world in which, like, Xbox doesn't become a computer. Right. That's what they've always wanted. Yeah. I think for a while everybody thought it was going to just be a streaming puck, like an Apple TV. That was, I think, the fantasy of games.

I don't think that's true. You think? I mean, no, no, no, it's not that. It might have been true if the Apple TV was in any way a successful product. And that killed it? Just like, I just bought a new fancy LG OLED TV. It's just a stupid idea to put an Apple TV underneath it. Really?

Yeah, it's A, it's not 4K. Yep. So that automatically it's like, you buy the Ferrari and then you're like, what if I don't put any gas in it? Yeah. Right? Like, that's dumb. Its whole app ecosystem is so messy. Like, it's just messy.

Like, there are apps on my Apple TV where I downloaded the first day and I just looked at them the other day. They're just empty. Like, people just, like, the Mashable app. They just forgot. Like, whoever was in charge of putting videos in the Mashable app was like, what if I no one's, I don't notice this? They just, like, stopped doing.

It's Sam Schaeffer's job, I think. Oh. That's a double way makes. Sam got out of the penalty box. No, like, it's just, all that stuff is just, it's empty, like, the whole TV app, the monolithic app. Microsoft has a way better chance of building a computer that they care about that has actual games and thus actual people using its put new software on your TV box functionality. Yeah. Then Apple came anywhere close to with the Apple.

But doesn't Apple? And doesn't Microsoft, in order to win, have to be, successful enough up against the PlayStation in the console market and be successful enough up against Steam in like the, I'm going to download games out the internet on a computer department in order for this thing to hit enough critical mass for their long-term strategy to work. Don't they have to like slay both dragons in order for this to work? I don't think that's necessarily true. I see what you mean. I think the bigger problem is they came up with a really good business model, which is. the thing they do often. The original

Xbox one had some great ideas that were pitched terribly. Yeah. And not implemented so well either. Yeah, but the model that they have of like, hey, you're going to buy something once, it'll work on anything you have, that could be a video game

console, it could be a phone, it could be a computer, that's a really exceptional promise, right? And it's really great for them because it locks you in to like all those things. Hopefully. Yeah. The problem is you have to get started on it. Like, you have to have a reason to get in.

And if you don't open that door, if there's not, this is where exclusive games come in. This is where Breath of the Wild comes in for the Switch, right? Yeah. You have to have really compelling reasons just to get people's foot in the door and to get them away from PlayStation, where a lot of them already are. I mean, this is what would work for Nintendo if they would get around to, I know it's not. fair to say get around to releasing games, but like, I'm just saying... They have two first-party games coming out in like the next two months. Yeah, I know.

Three. They have Mario Kart, arms, and Splatoon. One game a month in the Nintendo Switch story. One game a month is pretty... No, I meant as a consumer. Yeah. It plays one game at a time, one game for a month. Waka, lacca, laika.

I'm hard on Switch, but I'm... I'm... I'm bullish. You almost came around. I'm hard on the switch, but hmm. All right, I'm going to read the ad, and then we should talk about Nintendo. All right. Are you hiring?

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your office. You just quickly screen the candidates, rate them, and hire the right person fast. Find out today what ZipRecruiter has been used by Fortune 100 companies and thousands of small and medium-sized businesses. And right now, Vergecast listeners can post jobs on ZipRecruiter for free by going to ZipRecruiter.com slash Verge. That's zipprecruiter.com slash verge. One more time, try it for free. Go to ziprecruiter.com slash verge. So, Chris, we are talking about Nintendo. Yeah.

Finally. Do you want me to, like, give the whole run down? Unlike Microsoft, they do everything right. Why can't, what is going on? I'm really holding myself back on this one. So, Nintendo launched the Nintendo Switch. Yes. I'm giving you, this is called Context.

And when they did that, they were, were like, they brought out Reggie, who runs into America, like, build some confidence. And he was like, he does everything. He literally builds all the machines himself, too. His bandwidth is extremely limited. Pretty incredible. But he was like, hey, remember the NES classic that we released during the holidays and, like, nobody could buy one?

We're not going to have that problem for the Nintendo Switch. They're going to be so money. If you want one, you'll be able to get one. That's not entirely true. But, like, the market around the switch isn't so inflated, I would say, to be absurd. Right. Like, you can probably find one if you really looked for it, or you can pay a little bit more. Yeah.

Meanwhile, you get the sense that there are a set number of factories, Nintendo Works with, and they all went to the switch. Yeah. And the NES Classic, which was hard to find before Christmas, it just has remained that way. I think it's gone on sale a few times, maybe, since then. like things actually shipped. And then today, Nintendo announced

that they've decided to discontinue the NES Classic Edition, which is amazing because they sell out the second they go on sale. Wait, wait, wait, wait, they have a quote. I have to give this quote. Because the quote is

unbelievable. Here we go. Read it in Mario's voice. You have to read it in Mario's voice. I cannot because I will get fired because that's offensive. Also, did you know Mario is in his 20s? Really?

Yeah. We won't go into that. Hang on. How does he grow... I've got to read the quote. That mustache is... Okay. The company released the following statement to the verge.

Throughout April, Nintendo of America Territories will receive the last shipments of Nintendo Entertainment System, NES Classic Edition Systems for this year. We encourage anyone interested in obtaining this system to check with Retail Outlist regarding availability. We understand that this has been difficult for many consumers to find a system. And for that, we apologize. We have paid close attention to consumer feedback, and we greatly appreciate the incredible level of consumer interest and support for this product.

We have paid close attention. You all want this product. And that's why we've decided to cancel it. They wanted it too much. It's also not hard to make it. Yeah, I was just like, you don't need a Nintendo factory to make it. You just, like, call up anybody. Can you put this one board in this one piece of plastic?

It's so good. I mean, I think it's pretty obvious what is happening here. One of two things. One, there's another version, and it's going to also come out this Christmas. Yeah. And they'll be like, actually, there are three options. One, new version comes up this Christmas. It has, like, 30 more games.

NES classic special edition and they're going to have a ton and that's where they're stopping now because they're like... Super Nintendo Classic. Well, that's number two. Number two is like, we're just going to move right on to the S&ES. Which I don't know why you do that because like people still want the NES get your money and then do the S&S next year.

The third option though is... And this would be the most Nintendo option would be that they're like, we just would rather people focus on the Nintendo Switch. We don't want market confusion. Yeah. just, it really is discontinued, and, like, people need to start loving the switch. Which I like, the more I think about it, the more likely it sounds like a real possible outcome.

The, I mean, yeah, I think you're right. The easy one would be, like, go get more money. But I could see how in their Nintendo way, they would think we can't have one of these out anywhere near the holidays because we need people going into the store and buying the Nintendo Switch. Speaking of very Nintendo things. But it's April. Well, you cancel it now because, like, you need to put out this fire. Like, people keep, I'm sure people are messaging them constantly being like, how do I get

this dang thing? Yeah. There's DMing Nintendo on Twitter. Yeah. Or, like, DMing me and, like, video games. You know them? You must work there, right? Remember when everyone thought Engadgett was a store?

It was on our about page. We are not a store. We get Facebook messages. I'm a circle breaker all the time. You should sell them some shirts. It's not what they're looking for. They're looking for this way to feed your pets. Speaking of very Nintendo things, I've played a Switch.

Battery Life is not the best. But I was very excited to read the headline that they are releasing battery packs for the Switch. And I was like, yes. They're battery packs for the JoyCon controllers. Okay, this rule. Which lasts 20 hours of pop in theory. I'd never tested it. And how do you power these battery packs?

I don't know With double A batteries Oh that's right, yes Yes, it's a game gear What Why? On what world is the battery life On the controllers

The bigger concern Yeah, I don't know Well, are they imagining Are they imagining that these things Never get connected And they like sit around like little like Sideways NES controllers And the consoles like hidden in the cabinet

Never gets used and people just use them In like their little individual mode all the time and that's the primary way they play games. That's what they think is happening. It's like, oh, you're just going to leave it in house mode for the long term. And then you're just going to have your, like, little controllers sitting around. So you can pick them up real quick. Right?

Like, I think you have to have them detached. Yeah. So you just have two kind of, like, the little baby controllers floating around. Because they think that all we're going to do is play arms. Yeah, I guess. And snippet clips. It's not, listen. It's not a good idea.

But is it an idea? Yes. It is an idea. There's not all accounts right now? Sometimes? Yes. That's, I mean, it is, I like that Nintendo was like, we have made a piece of hardware that is maybe the best thing that could ever happen to accessory makers, including ourselves. Yeah.

Like, you can remove the controllers. You could, in theory, put on custom controllers. You could sell millions of colors. And they were like, got it. So one new color. And I've run out of ideas. I don't know. Triple A battery chargers.

And they're like, no, double A. They're like, oh, cool. Thank goodness somebody cut me. Okay, let's put it out. I mean, I love Nintendo. I love that the switch is selling so absurdly well. And it's like this huge hit in Japan. and that like we're just going to get more Nintendo forever.

Yeah. But like they truly are the Rocky Balboa of video games. And they just get pulverized. And they come back and you're like, he's like 800. How is he still doing it? And they're like, don't worry about it. And then they make another stupid decision. And then just up and down, hills and valleys.

They are the definition of drama. It's very hard to get a switch. That's all I'm going to say. I've been trying. You haven't got one yet? I just don't want to do the Craigslist thing. I don't know why. I've done the Craigslist thing for all kinds of other stuff.

Yeah. But here I am. My buddy was like, I pre-ordered it at GameStop. Like there was a backlog. They said it'd be a couple of weeks, but then it came in a few days and it was fine. There you go. I'm just going to get a switch. It's going to be great.

All right. Paul. Every week. Always. And forever. He will never stop. I do a segment called, guess who's got a birthday coming up. So I actually hadn't heard of this monitor, but Dell at CES 2016 announced a 4K 30-inch OLED monitor.

Yeah, I remember this. And then they couldn't figure out how to build it. And at CES 2017, they said it was canceled. And now they just showed up on the internet and said, we're shipping it in two weeks. the refresh rate is cut in half from the thing that you originally announced. Originally it was going to be 120 hertz. So my thing is I don't really know who this is for. Apparently some video people like to work with OLED,

but like typically OLED can be a little more saturated, so it's not the most color accurate. And then gamers like high refresh rates, but latency on OLED is really, really nice. It's like 0.1 millisecond. Yeah. Compared to like a one millisecond or five milliseconds. a second on a typically

gaming monitor? It's $3,500. Wow. Here's the thing. I just bought a 65-inch OLED 4K TV. It wasn't that expensive. Well, but here's the weird thing. Yeah, but are you happy?

Super happy. Don't OLED 4K TVs have terrible response time for gaming? Yeah. They're not great. Yeah. They're not like super great. Yeah. Good luck enjoying that. It has one H-DMI port labeled Game. We're just going to see how that goes.

It's interesting, though. Yeah. Because of this error. I'm not even claiming, by the way, that I have the reflexes necessary to tell the difference. Like, my strategy at Madden is like, I press X a lot. Press X. That's the whole game. Hey, Strat.

Well, Circle makes you spin. Oh, X. So you're playing on PlayStation. Yeah. I thought you were playing on Xbox and it's like, I don't think that's a button for us. But no, you're right. On PlayStation, it would be an X. I think it's the B button.

I didn't butt actually you. I just did it in my head. After all that PlayStation boosting, we still live in an Xbox town. You don't own a PlayStation, Eli. Huh? You don't own a PlayStation. All of my Madden moves are related to the PS2.

In my head, I'm still planning on a PS2. This gets more and more complicated the further we go. Yeah. Circle makes you spin. That's the name of my forthcoming autobiography. Circle makes you spin. Anyway, Paul, this monitor. Are you going to get one?

No. But I will have a birthday eventually. Wait. I have a question. Do you have G sync on your monitor? No. Are you an AMD person? No.

You have a G? I have a 1070 in my computer. And right now I use a Vizio TV as my computer monitor. Interesting. It's not a bad choice. But it's only like it maxes out 60 frames per second. So I really, really want like a high refresh rate. Paul was telling me the other day he's found a number of blogs dedicated only to high refresh rate.

I think that should be 50% of the stuff we cover on the bridge deck. Yeah, so does Paul. G-sink and like 120 hertz? Yeah, 120 or 144, some of that. But here's the thing. If you are at a high refresh rate, you don't necessarily need G-sync or freesync. What do you think about that? I think I got both.

I'm living the dream I want to really start lightning round I want to lead the lightning round I never get to leave the lightning round It's time Are you ready? Yeah Paul

Yeah Samsung is not shipping Bixby with the Galaxy S8 when it launches That's the sound The dog makes Little legs in the air What

How do dogs work for you? Oh Bel Air Thank you sorry If you're just in your car listening, I just gave Chris the most disgusted look. How dare you not be following my dog with shoes, Joe? I was picturing the dog from Duck Hunt with the way you're motioning. And I was like...

Oh, right. Yeah. Does a dog from Duck Hunt have a name? I bet it does. Dead. She's got it constantly. But you can't hit the dog. I know.

In my version, you can. From Duck Hunt. I already did Paul. Chris. Amazon is willing to sell its microphone array to other companies to stick them in their speakers. So you can get the proper echo microphones on other things, not like crappy microphones. Okay. I thought it was the software. Is it the software?

Yeah, it's like the, I think you still have to source your own microphone parts, but it's like that their algorithms for like noise cancellation. Is that even a question for me? Yeah. You're supposed to react to that. It's lightning round. It's so complicated. Just say run-wrung. Biggs, babe, I'm a dog.

Got it. Neely. The dog from duck hunt may or may not be named Mr. Peepers. No! That would be like a fake Wikipedia entry. The Wikipedia entry says the dog is sometimes called Laughing Dog, but there's a lot of not necessarily accurate game facts pages for Internet. No, is Mr. Peeba. Oh, my God.

Okay. Last lightning round is for you. Eco is not buying Vizio. They called it off. Thank God. I'm super happy about that. Me too. Yeah.

I mean. Leco hasn't been able to do a single thing that wasn't a complete dumpster fire for the past six months, if not longer. Yeah. And they held a number of bombastic events. Yeah. They spent a bunch of money that they maybe didn't have. And they promised to build factories and then didn't.

And then sort of did and then something. So if the sale had gone through, it would have destroyed Vizio. You know when you're a kid and you invent things? Tell me more about this. Yeah, it's like, yeah, like my niece and nephew are like, we're going to invent a car that talks. And then like they draw a picture of a car and like, where's all the work? And they're like, no, no, no, it just talks. That's like Lico's entire product development department.

Wow. Right? Like, their whole thing is like, we made a self-driving car. Like, how does it work? I just don't get it. It just drives itself. It's like I made a slingshot with a Pez dispenser in it. That requires some like engineering effort.

This is like Leco's whole plan was like, they're great ideas. It required duct tape. They made TVs, they made phones and they made like the Netflix of China or whatever. And cars. They're a very successful company that did a very good job. And then it showed up in America and forgot how to do everything. But the stuff it used to make was like commodity stuff. I mean, just their entire, I don't know.

But I think the Vergecast listeners know, I'm always in FanVizio. Yeah. They do some good stuff. They're like, they move fast. Their TV doesn't work with YouTube TV yet. That's like a really interesting question. Really angry about that. Because Google is supposed to own that cast model.

Well, the Google didn't do their job. Oh, Google, by the way, supports 4K on the Chromecast Ultra. Yep. Doesn't support it in the Google Play movies app on my 4K TV, which is some high. Hot bullshit. Whop-wop. So I think they're trying to randomly push Chromecast sales, which is super annoying because the thing costs like $45.

Why are you trying to make $45 extra dollars, Google? Just sell me the movie. Anyway, what are you going to say, Paul? I was just going to say my Vizio TV crashes, and I use it as a computer. Do you have the smartcast TV or the software? Smartcast. Oh, and it crashes. Yeah.

That sucks. And I think it's exactly. every 24 hours. If I leave it on for 24 hours, at the end of that 24 hour period, it's like, uh-oh. So if you watch for like three hours a day after, it's fine. After like eight days, it crashes. There's like a clock of how long it's allowed to stay on before a crash. Paul, I think the only option here is for you to set up an elaborate time lapse rig.

I think I need a science. Like, sure, I could watch less TV. No, elaborate time lapse rig. Yeah. I have some ideas. All right. What's that thing called? The gorilla pod?

Girlamout? Hmm? Gorilla cam. Are you talking about like tripods? Yeah. That's your idea? That's your elaborate idea? Trypods.

Buy a $10 tripod? It's been a long week. All right? You try to figure out this weird patent lawsuit. That's fair. That's fair. Circles everywhere. All right, that, for better or worse, has been our show, I think.

Well, that's Chris has some more stuff. Nope, that's it. Would you say people know now everything they need to know about technology? Yeah. And everything they wish they knew when they were younger. You have been updated upon it. Wow. Yeah.

That's a weird phrase. Because it implies that you're on top of a tech. And then something bad happened to you. What? I don't know. I don't follow it at all. Look, now you know everything you need to know. I'm going to say everybody should find out more about tech.

and read the story on our site right now. Nintendo doesn't want your money. It wants your soul. Yeah, it makes that. Really fired up about this thing. It's a great headline. Anyway, that was the whole show. It struggled to have finished,

but we got there in the end. We'll be back next week. There's other shows to listen to. Walt is retiring, as you may or we not know, Walt Mosberg is retiring. So he and I have six-ish episodes left in Control Out Delete. We just did one. We went deep on internet policy, which was pretty fun.

So listen to that. Lauren Good. host Toombare's to Ask, which is super good with an E. Think about it. Peter Kafka, host, Recode, Media, and Karraswisher, host, RICOD. They're all excellent. They're all on iTunes. Go find them, rate them, review them.

You can tweet at us. You can particularly tweet at Chris about games-related issues. You're restraining yourself so much right now. And the controversy that he courts regarding them. He's at Plant. With an E. With an E. The other person at Plans.

French Canadian. I wonder what company might enjoy that. Paul is Mr. Peepers. Paul has had Future Paul. Dieter's at Backlund. I'm a reckless. Talk to us. We love it.

Oh, there's some stuff on Verge Extras that I need to mention. Lauren Grush and Al-Apetenza, our science editor, interviewed Mark and Scott Kelly. Oh, what? Which is super cool. You should listen to that. It's actually really funny because Mark and Scott Kelly were like doing, they were on a promo tour for the watch brand they wear,

and they just forgot to talk about it. at the end, they're like, hang on, this watch. That's hilarious. Brian Bishop moderated a panel on a movie called The Tension Experience at Southwest. It's also an extras. We're doing some experiments. So Walt's show is winding down. We want to make sure we have podcasts in the world.

So you're going to see us do experiments, formats, segments. We'll run some on this show. Let us know what you like. We want to make sure we have a full stable of stuff. So you'll see more of that stuff. Do let us know what you like and what you don't like. We'll turn whatever is good and popular into shows. So keep an eye for that stuff.

and that's it. We will see you next week. Rock and roll. Paul. Paul. Mr. Peepers. Bye.