The Vergecast - Is kale more interesting than the iPhone SE?

Episode Date: March 25, 2016

This week on Vergecast, Nilay and Dieter bring in news editor Jake Kastrenakes to discuss happenings at the Apple event this week as well as Vizio's new products and initiatives. Racked style editor Nicola Fumo again joins us to helm the hype matrix. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Theverge.com. I am Neil Epitel, the Underchief of The Verge. I'm joined by Jay Castramackas. Hello. Dieter Bone. Hey. Fumo's back. Hello, all.

The Vergecast is brought to you by Cizzer Vodka, which is Vodka brand that I made up and that I will introduce the show with every week until someone gives me a contract to produce this vodka. Cizzer vodka. Cicinac. So it's a big week. That's going on. Deeter's back.

Safety Vodka. Safety Cisor vodka? No one wants to drink something called. It's vodka for children. It's just water. Tangy water. Vodka's not supposed to be tangy. Well, you know what I mean?

It's like, let me ask you this. Okay. Is non-alcoholic flavored vodka just vitamin water? No, vitamin water has a bunch of sugar in it. But yeah, what are you talking about? Like a pre-mixed. But like a flavored vodka has sugar in it.

You're right. Yeah, like a can, vodka crayon is just a vitamin water when you take the alcohol out. Right? And Virchcast is done for the week, everybody. All the problems are solved. We've accomplished all that we can accomplish. Anyway, huge week. Deeter was gone. Yeah, I was.

Last week. Where was I? I don't know where you were. But where were you? I don't remember. But now there's this pink phone. You've got a weird computer in front of you. Yeah.

You've got a whole new life happening. Yeah. Anyway. Oh, I was gone last week because you wouldn't let me on the show because you were talking about the Michelle Obama piece. Oh, right. I was right here, Neelai. Oh, I was setting up the fact that you were at Apple.

Oh, well, that was later. Yeah. That was early this week. And now I have the iPad Pro in front of me. Yeah. And the keyboard. Yeah. Tell me about this event.

So, it was at Apple's Infinite Loop in their little town hall venue. Yeah. Theater. It was like emotional. They were like, this is the last time I'll ever be in this room. Probably. Yeah. Are you going to, is it a good room?

No, it's an awful room. It's a very small. It's really small. It fits like 75 people. Yeah, no, it's this tiny little theater. So I don't. This isn't where the weekend played? No.

The weekend played at Musconi Center, which is like this massive conference thing. Apples Town Hall. So you drive, when you drive in Apple, you actually drive down Infinite Loop. You make a left, and there's like four very bland buildings. Like Apple's current campus is not like particularly exciting. And they're all like beige. And they'll have little signs and numbers. Yep.

So it's two or three? Dial 4. Infinite Loop 4 is where town hall is. Oh, it's town hall. Oh, yeah. But you park at Infinite Loop 1 at the main entrance to the lobby next to like the official like Apple Campus Apple store, which by the way Apple, what's the phrase, ruined. They did. I know exactly what you're complaining about it. The old phrase.

Look, look, I've never bought anything from the Apple Campus Apple Store. But, like, tourists like to go to the Apple campus to, like, say, I went to the loop. Yeah, there's always people taking a photo. Like, people take selfies in front of the sign. Yeah. And they want to buy. Cheesy t-shirts? Yeah, they want to go buy a cheesy t-shirt that says, yeah, there is.

But, like, there's a store that, like, the tourists can go to. That's like, I went to Apple and all I got to see was this t-shirt and, like, little baby socks and beanies. And all this, like, Apple swag. It's the only place on Earthward there's, like, official Apple swag. Yeah. And they decided, nope, not anymore. They cut the store in half, and they only sell, like, six T-shirts now. The school store.

The rest of it's a regular old Apple store. Yeah. It's a very confusing. It's a cafe or, uh, no. No. Well, they don't want people like hanging out that long. They want them to show up, take their picture, buy an Apple T-shirt, and then get the hell out.

Right. But they used to be, it used to be full of stuff. Like cool Apple stuff. And like particularly like a hilarious collection of T-shirts. And that has been reduced greatly. Ooh. Is that resale? Is that Flip going to become hot now?

You got one of those like 2014 Apple? I got, I got an official Apple bib. y'all. Yeah. The value goes up 6,000%. So you drive in and you park there and then they buzz everybody through a press entrance. I actually forgot we were talking about the iPhone.

I mean, that's kind of the nature of the event, right? So then you walk down this long thing. And then you go into a door and it's this long hallway and on one side is a photo of young Steve Jobs. Yep. And on the other side is a photo of old Steve Jobs. And there's also Steve Jobs quote. There's a piano that Steve Jobs bought for the engineers of designers or something in the early Mac days

to show them that you could combine art and engineering to create an instrument. Oh, yeah, this is the whole thing with you. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, and then on the left side, there's like the theater, and just across the hall is... A room?

It's a tiny room where the hands-on happens. It's like the size of your living room in a McMansion. It's not that big. Yeah. And that room just gets insane. Yeah. Just absolutely... They rate limit how many people are allowed in,

which means like you go in, you do your stuff, and then you leave, and then you've got to wait like a half an hour to get back in. Yeah, it's very confusing. But so the event, it was like at the town hall, so it wasn't like a million people was relatively a small group

and we're tight in there, packed in there really tightly. And I don't know if you guys watched the keynote. I know you guys watched a keynote, but if you didn't watch a keynote, a typical Apple keynote starts with like, it's like numbers. It's like, and then this,

and then this, and then they just go through. it. And this one was different. Instead of starting with like, hey, we, X billion, X million, this, that. They did a little bit of that. And then usually the next thing is we opened another, you know, we opened our 432nd Apple store in this town in China and look how great it was. And here's a little cool demo reel. Instead, they showed a video of like 40 years of Apple products flashing on the screen and text. And then we went into a brief bit about privacy, because that's the big Apple story, which we were probably going to talk about later.

and then Lisa Jackson Yeah, environments Came and talked about the environment And how they're trying to get to 100% renewable And they showed off a little robot called Liam That like disassembles iPhones And she was actually great She was really, really good on stage

And then after environment They did, what was the third thing? Health. Health, yeah, they did a bunch of care kit stuff So like This whole beginning section Of like it was only like a 45 minute event Like a solid 20 minutes was like

Apple, we're going to protect your privacy, we're going to fight the U.S. government. We're really good about the environment, and we're going to save your life. And then they'd be like, oh yeah, and by the way, we've got some new products. Yeah, and it was just very low-key. Yeah, I would say the juxtaposition between them saying the government shouldn't have your data, but please give us all your health care data was very interesting to me. Yeah. Well, I feel like one was designed to like set up trust for the other one, maybe.

Yeah, I mean, we should do the products, but we should talk. with the FM. But like Apple is clearly repositioning itself is not just a gadget company, right? Well, they've always never, they've never thought of themselves as just a gadget company. What do you mean? Yeah. No, but they have been, right? They've been the forward thinking technology company, right? And they put out new products to change your life. Right. And they're a product company. They make products. Right. And now what Apple's saying is like, we will help you cure Parkinson's disease. Which is also a lot of what we're seeing Google do. Google is way more diversified than Apple is at this point. Apple is purely consumer technology and it seems like

it's trying to, well, it still seems like it's trying to be consumer focused, but it is entering that health sphere in a big way. Yeah. Yeah. But Google's way of doing it is spinning off Calico. I mean, Google's like, Google's like, we're going to help you live forever. Apple's like, we're going to help you count your steps and we'll catch that's such other. They're also like, we'll help you cure Parkinson's. Yeah, but it was just a very somber event at the beginning, which set up a very set of low-key, a set of very low-key product announcement. So let's get into them.

So we've got it here, the iPhone 5. Do we start with the iPhone 5 or the Apple Watch bands? I mean, are we starting and escalating order? The only thing I want to say about the Apple Watch bands is like, there's a new Nylon one, there's the Black Melanese, which is whatever. But the interesting thing to me is they just said, this is our spring lineup. This is our spring line, which is, unless it,

I'm dumb how you refer to like fashion stuff. I asked them today are you doing fashion cycles and they were like no. Oh, well I got told yes. I got told yes we are doing fashion cycles. Cool. They clearly have like what they say to you. Yeah, I thought it was interesting because I was like, okay, so, so this is just new bands. And I was like, but I was like, but other like third party manufacturers can make bands, right? And they were like, yeah. And I was like, okay, so, so you made them, you made these new ones and, but everyone can make them? I don't know. It was just, I felt like I didn't have the right questions to ask, I was like, uh,

yeah, I was clearly told like, but they gave you some bands. Yeah, I picked out a nylon one. I was more interested in the nylon one in person, because it actually has four levels of weave, so it has this like three-dimensional effect in person.

It's kind of cool, but it's just, I don't know, it's not really me. I wish I'd picked a leather one. I made a bad choice. Yeah. They gave me the black Milanese.

I asked for a black nylon one, and they gave me two. Podcasts. Oh. Yeah. So we've got one. It's very nice. It's nice.

They're nice. They're bands. I don't know. What's interesting to me is they didn't discontinue any of the old bands. Oh, that's really? Yeah. Man, whoever I talked to just lied to be left and right,

because they definitely told me that eventually, like, other bands are going to, like, go out of season and not be around. I really thought they were going to... Wow. Deeter and I had radically different pre-fings. Yeah. So they told me... I thought they were going to announce, like, a designer collaboration or something,

and I'm still waiting, like, for the Met Gala in early May. I'm, like, assuming... Because Apple's sponsoring... Explain what the Metcala is. Apple's sponsoring this big event. The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has this, like, well, they have a big show every spring. And this year it's kind of the intersection of technology and fashion. It's a little complicated.

But there's like a huge, like, red carpet event the night before that it's like the biggest night in fashion. The Oscars of fashion, in case the Oscars didn't have enough fashion. So, yeah, so Apple's the solo sponsor of this fashion technology crossover event. and I just assumed there was going to be like a big designer announcement, or I really was hoping they would be like watch two, and then they would have everyone on the red carpet wearing the watch too. But it seems like that's not happening. So, I mean, for them to be commanding this much attention in this space

that they've been trying to penetrate for so, I mean, they are, they have penetrated, but trying to stay, like, top of mind, they got to, there has to be something else coming. Like, there has to be another more exciting shoe to drop around MetGala. Otherwise, it's like you have this platform and you, You got to do more with it, right? Yeah. I mean, so this is the, I mean, overarching theme for Apple right now is you got to do more.

Right. I mean, Walt wrote a column yesterday in his column, and if you want to listen, Walt and I talked about it for 45 minutes on his podcast. The next iPhone has to be spectacular, right, was his column. And I just think it's great. So what they told me was that all the bands will stay available, but the systems that you can buy. the watch plus a band will change out. Apple, why do you lie to me? It doesn't make any sense.

Why can't you just buy it with the band that you want? Yeah, why can't you just buy a watch in a band? But no, they're systems. So I saw all the systems that they will currently sell, so a bunch of the existing systems are going to go away. But the whole complete array of their bands will remain. That's exactly what I'm looking for, fewer choices when making, buying something that I'm going to wear around all the time.

Well, I think their thing is to make it seem, like, If you don't, if you're interested in watching, see a combination you want, you better buy it. Because otherwise, you'll have to buy one you don't like in a band that you do. I mean, I'm totally, if they start doing like seasonal bands, I'm super into that. Because this feels like a spring collection. These feel like spring designs.

Yeah, they're light. They start at $49. Hey. An easy way to change it. That was the version I got. Really? Yeah. Oh, that's so not the version I got.

Yeah. Like an easy way to off to your watch for $48. No, definitely not the version I got. I got I tried very hard to ask them like are people using the apps what are people doing are you going to update the watch and they're like we have new bands yeah because it's like they think of it as a fashion thing yeah it's a smart watch anymore anyway so that's the Apple Watch um I think we're all sort of in agreement that the people who like Jake's wearing one right now yeah Nicola are you wearing one no no yeah Dieter wrote a column today yeah it's like these aren't ready yet they have no focus tell go through it I don't think smartwatches are ready yet. Neither Android wear nor Apple Watch.

I think that the main thing is that they're not focused enough. They're too slow. They designed the watch they want to have, the Dream Watch, and the processors are too slow to make stuff happen. And so only a couple of things work. And then there's a bunch of other crap you don't need, and the crap you don't need makes the things you actually want, like, harder. Yeah.

All the extra stuff on the Apple Watch means doing the basic stuff I want, slower and more of a hassle. And so it's just not focused. focused enough. And because I'm old, I compared it to PDAs in the late 90s when Palm Pilots were simple. They were dumb. They didn't. They weren't powerful. They had stupid 160 by 160 green screens and they were fast and they worked. Yeah. And pocket PCs were like, we're a computer and they were big and heavy and bulky and slow and tried to be windows and they were just too much. Yeah. And turns out both died. Both got killed by the iPhone. But everybody that's making

these smartwatches are thinking in terms of big computers on your wrist and they should be thinking about like narrowing down the focus to just the things that they want you to do that you want to do. I feel like everybody is very confused or got very confused by Dick Tracy. And I blame Dick Tracy

for this problem. How often... He is a jerk. Do you... That yellow slicker man? Press anything on your watch. I never leave the main screen. If it's not going to show it to me, I'm... That's because it takes too long. I think there's an

action model there, but I think a lot of people have this vision of Dick Tracy in their mind where this was this was the thing. He solved every problem by fucking with the thing. Okay, I can't log in to my watch right now because I entered my password wrong three times. What? I entered my password wrong because

the buttons are too tiny and now I can't look. I had to wait five minutes. I think I can log in again. Why do you have to log in at all? You look ridiculous. You have to tap a code in in order to start doing the... But you can unlock your phone. Yeah, okay, but I'm using an Android phone right now.

Wait, you're using Android phone with an Apple Watch? That's impossible. But let me tell you this. Let's get into it. Oh, my God. I've been switching between a Moto 360, a GearS2, and Apple Watch, both of which, sync with my Nexus, worse experiences than just an Apple Watch on its own. Wow.

Really? Yeah. Wow, I completely disagree. What does an Apple Watch on its own do? Tell you the time. Yeah, if you, like, wave your arm around like a crazy person. So, okay, so I do have my phone with me, but it's like upstairs. And so as long as I'm within range of my phone.

Your iPhone, you mean? Yeah, my iPhone, I get notifications and it tells me the weather. That's all I want. Yeah. That's all I want. It's ideal. Yeah, notifications, weather, step counts. Wait, you switch songs?

I don't want. On my little pebble. Which is a little bit dumb and I like that. The pebble is the palm pilot of smart watches. Yeah, because it has hard buttons. You can't swipe anything. You know that they just laid off 25% of their staff? Why?

Because they're going to lose. because they don't have deep integration with the operating system and because they don't have like huge massive manufacturing and design resources to make, you know, an insanely... Yo, I've sold a lot of Pebble Time rounds for personal one-to-one. Really? Yeah. You're the RICO rate.

The Pesol-Fi round is great. Because I'm out there and girls are like, what is that? And I'm like, it's a watch. It's smart. Let me tell you about it. And then I've had girls buy it out. I'm buying right now. On their phone, right in front of me.

And I'm like, this is special what's happening here. Did you sell them, like, do you give him a free shot of cinnamon vodka? Or something. Cizzer cinnamon. It's like a woman-specific, you know, how women like different podcas men. Becky and I were, you were buying wine milk. No, I'm being, I'm being, like, sexist. Yes.

Liquor. No, no, no, it's not like sexist. I mean, like liquor companies, being sexist. We went into our wine store in our neighborhood the other day to, like, buy the things we usually buy. So Becky buys a bottle of wine. I'm buying my little bottle of bullet. And there's the poor woman there selling, she, like,

trying desperately to hand out shots of cinnamon tequila. Oh, God. And Beck, sure, whatever. We're going to do it. So we're like, take the shots. And she's like, will you take a selfie with me for engagement? And I was like, no. And she's like, that's okay.

I've been taking them with the store employees because no one cares. Oh, my God. So the more store guys, she's like, I have to do it. She said for engagement. She said, she was so broken down. The words are getting crazy out there. It was a very somber moment. because what the company

and she's like I don't care I don't really work for this company it's just an agency but they want me to hand out shots and take selfies with people so they share them and I was like I understand all the mechanics of what you just said

but I'm not doing that and she's like no one does and then she took another selfie with the cash register I think they're counting the number of photos that she's probably wow it's our life

this is the future you can get free for engagement the Ticula also gross but scissors are cinnamon. Delicious. Delicious. For the ladies.

That's awful. No, it's for men. Maybe all of scissors flavor should be like healthy spices instead of like turmeric. Cardamom? Yeah. Cesar cardamom. Cesar kale. That's not a flavor.

Cale, not a healthy spice. I don't know. No, no one sprinkles kale. It's pretty bitter. I've really come around to kale lately and I think that people just need to give it a second chance. Hey, I'm big on it. I'm big on kale, but no.

Michael is enlightened. If you cook it, throw a few pieces of kale in the oven. I want to ask the list of salt on it. I want the listeners to tell me via Twitter if this conversation... Should we continue talking about kale or if you're talking about the iPad? Is it more interesting to talk about kale? Or should we talk about the iPhone SC?

And it is an open question in my mind. Which of those two things is more interesting? No, I think kale is actually one of the new watchstrap colors. Oh yeah, no, I received a question. a green iPad case. I think that's mint, though. Are you scrolling with a pen? Yo.

All right. Let's talk about this iPhone. So, Nicola. Yes. The only real notable difference in the iPhone line is that this one is now Rose Gold. Are you seeing one holding? And it's little. It's little.

But it does all the stuff is six. Six S. Six S guts five body. Six S in the sheets, five in the street. I don't know. Five in the streets. Five in the streets. Yeah.

Six S in the streets. Five in the streets. Five in the streets. No, it's the other way around because the insides are the six S. Six S in the sheets. Yeah. Five us in the streets. Five us in the streets.

It's just the worst. Anyway, here's my five. I brought it. You brought it. But have you seen this? Yeah, yeah. I played with it today too. What do you think?

I'm not a little phone person. It makes me feel real big. And I don't like that I can put the whole phone in my hand. It's going to drop like this one did. Yeah, that one's a real broken. It's my shattered five. So what is the, It's got NFC so you can do Apple Pay.

It doesn't have everything that the success has. So it doesn't have... Hard touch. Faster. Force touch. 3D touch. 3D touch. Hard touch.

Yeah. You press hard. Hard touch, by the way. Worst Stevenson, all movie. The sequel was forced touch. Okay. And then force touch 3D, which was just, most people just call it 3D touch. Yeah.

Sorry. Have you never seen a Steven Segal movie? No. Really? All right. Go home and watch. Under Siege. Oh, yeah.

Under Siege is great. Do you think I'll like it? Yeah, I mean... All I like is a scandal. Do you like it is like the wrong question? You don't like or dislike a Steven Seagal movie. You just experience it. They just occur to you.

Yeah. At you. It seems like a third half. Have you ever seen Die Hard? Mm-mm. Oh, my God. Don't even put those in the same category. But Under Seas is die hard on a boat.

boat. It's 100% diehard on a boat. Yeah, except like, but Bruce Wilson is so much better than Steven Sagan. Yeah, but the script is, okay. But it is fundamentally die hard on a boat. Just like speed is die hard on a bus. Every movie is diehard in a different vehicle. Wait, no, they have speed on a boat.

Huh? And there's speed two. Yes, it's called speed boat. Yeah, no, I know, but speed two cruise control, which is a movie, I believe you're references. Yes. It's a garbage movie. But Keanu Reeves wasn't in that movie.

still a speed in the title all I know is die hard is a perfect movie and so to compare it to any other movie doesn't like mathematically doesn't work because it like on a scale of one to ten die hard is infinity and so like you know on a scale one to ten you know

a Steven's gone movie is like a three so like what's three divided by infinity I see what you're getting at yeah yeah I heard one or die hard three die hard four yeah die hard three no I mean die hard one obviously but then after die hard one comes die hard three

okay here Here's what I need to everybody to do. Tweet at Nicola and tell her which sequence of diehard movies she should watch. Yeah, I'll do it. It's difficult. I don't have other stuff to do. Die Hard 1. Oh, no.

You should, okay. The sequence is 1, 1, 3, 1. Do you watch it twice? Yeah, skip 4 entirely. Although he does launch a car to helicopter before. I have to watch the whole Fast and the Furious series, though. I hear that's more important. It's die hard on a road.

Yeah. Yeah. Every movie is die hard, but with slightly different. Because every movie fundamentally. is about going into a space missing your family and having to overcome some obstacle to find your family again.

And you're secretly a cop. And you're secretly a cop. And it's Christmas, but that's not really important. It's super important. No, the whole point of Die Hard being Christmas is not important. It's just around. No, it's just the best Christmas movie. I agree with you,

it's best Christmas movie, but it's not actually integral. It's just Christmas is an ambiance to die hard. Okay. Have you ever seen a kiss-kis-bang-bang? We're doing everything we can to not talk about the iPhone. Rip the band-aid. Let's talk about it. They announced an iPhone this week.

It's missing 3D touch. It doesn't have the fast touch ID. First of all, is it really missing 3D touch? Yeah, nobody's missing 3D touch. Everything we can. Oh, it doesn't have a barometer. 3D touch is a diehard film. Oh, I use the barometer every day.

I used the compass yesterday, actually. Wait, what did you? I used the compass yesterday. yesterday. The compass is great. You use the compass all the time whether or not you know it. Yeah, that's true.

That's true. It's true. Like, uses the compass. Well, I use the real. Were you on a ship? Compass app. What were you doing? I was like, I'm southeast on this corner,

but I was like, Manhattan's all funky. I want to what direction I really am. I was due east. That's all. Does the compass actually work in Manhattan? Because it often doesn't work here. What? Why?

What do you mean? It was off? Because there's buildings. There's metal all right now. Oh, well. Yeah. Okay. I feel like the most important thing about this phone is that it costs only $400.

It's also super fast. I did not ever expect Apple to go that low. Oh, yeah. Really? Okay, the 5C was $550. Yeah, they already had literally, like, I don't want to say that they just had the stuff in a parts bin. The 5C was a worst version of the 5, and they charged as much. Yeah, but you can get a Nexus 5X for...

Well, exactly, but I feel like Apple would totally just ignore that for no reason. So I think it costs them literally. really nothing to develop this phone. Yeah. It's the same screen as the 5S, I'm assuming. Yeah. I don't think they did any. I don't remember them doing any changes there.

I mean, they obviously had to repackage it. They had to make the hard, I think what's the most interesting thing. They managed, I think, to get a slightly bigger battery than the 5S had. I think the most interesting thing to me, this is across all of Apple's line now, is they're no longer delineated by screen size or capability. It's some weird matrix of both. So this is the SE, which stands for special edition. Right.

Which means they'll never do it again? I guess. I don't know. So you can buy the 6S internals with the small screen, the 6S internals with the big screen, but you can buy a big screen that is worse than both, because you can still buy the 6 and the 6 plus. So that's very confusing.

Because that means, and I asked, like, do you see people who are just prioritizing screen size? Because that is a thing. And I'm like, we don't know. People just like this fun. I was like, are you sure they don't just like cheap? because that people like that too and some people really love this.

So that's like one question. I think the other big question, particularly with the iPad, is it's all over the place. So iPad Mini doesn't mean anything. It just means a screen size. But iPad Pro doesn't mean anything. It just means a stylus and a keyboard.

But then the smaller iPad Pro has a better camera than the big iPad Pro. It is just all over the place. And it has the true tone screen. Two-tone? True tone. True tone. The two-tone screen.

Two-tone, true-tone. One side of its black. And it's always on, hey, Siri. Hey, Siri. Somebody sent me a very serious email about that saying we need to get to the bottom of why this one has Hey Siri. The other one does not. Really? Huh.

What do you mean, hey Siri? You could say, hey Siri. We're just trolling phones everywhere. Do you see this story? Uh-uh. NPR is doing a story about voice assistance, and they triggered everybody's electies. Yeah, to like buy stuff. Which is the thing that we do on purpose because we're terrible trolls.

It's funny. Man, I got Alexa drama in my life. What's happened? Did you get one? I ordered it and it's been stuck in USPS limbo. So I just have them return to sender. I feel like it doesn't want to come home. Right.

Why don't you just buy it from the Prime Now app? Well, it came to my house, but they didn't leave it. And then they read it again and they didn't leave it. Why don't you get it delivered here? Because I just wanted to have it at my house, you know, where it was going to go eventually. Oh, yeah. So, you know. Disappointing.

Really disappointing. I ordered all of them. For some reason, all of them are on their way to my house. How many echoes do you have? So we have the main one. I don't have the other ones yet. They're not. I don't have shipped yet.

But then I bought the dot. What's the other one called? The tap. The tap. Dot and tap. It's the echo dot and the Amazon tap. Very confusing. Yeah.

Anyway. So the iPhone has a cell. Yeah, here's a phone. It's cheap. It's cheap. I think even Apple struggled to say things about this phone. To be perfectly honest with you. Okay, it's super boring, but I actually think that it's like a ton of people are going to buy this thing.

I mean, cheap is what matters. Which is crazy. But like, I'm thinking I'm going to need to be like the person who lives in a two-phone world. Oh, I see. Yeah. That's something. That's a good. This is like, the thing that I would be willing to do with this thing that I wouldn't be willing to do with the six is like roll with it in my back pocket.

Yeah, actually when I was walking down here, instinctively went in my back pocket, which I haven't done with this, the 6-plus a long time. Yeah. I was carrying a gear S2 in my back pocket, super broke. Isn't that a watch? Well, yeah. All right. All right, let's talk about this iPad. So the iPad far more interesting.

Yeah, so it's all the same, well, everything, all the same stuff in the big iPad Pro. Actually, the naming, I want to get back to the name, the naming thing doesn't confuse me. Like, the iPhone naming thing, confusing as hell. Don't know. Yeah. But it's clear. that where they're moving with iPads is they wanted to just mirror

their Mac names, except the Mac names are not confusing too, because now it's just the Macbook. It's all confusing. You're right, I'm wrong. I just want an argument with you either about saying it works. Because he just said the name of Apple's products until he lost himself. Now, I hear what you said.

But if you ignore the iPad Mini, then you've got like the Air and the Pro, and like, that's clean and simple for iPads. But then you throw the Mini in and then you're like, huh. And then you're like, Oh, wait, Macs aren't clean between Air and Pro either because there's other stuff. So, never mind. I mean, how do you live in a world where every iPad doesn't have a smart connector for a keyboard? Why is that a Pro feature?

I don't understand that at all. I understand why the stylus is a pro feature, but that's not in the box. Right. So to me, it's just they've made this delineation and the pro was the big one. And they're like, you know what? A lot of people want the regular size one because that's the most popular one. we need to establish the ecosystem of pencil apps and keyboard accessories and nah-da-na-na-na-na-na so we're going to bring it to the most popular size but now the error

how can you make an iPad what is the iPad Air 3 it seems like they're I mean a I don't know what the iPad Air 3 is super awkward like a growing phase where the the lines are just hard to distinguish there's no distinguishing features between them like and I'm guessing within a couple years we're going to start to see more Pro features on the pro they're going to be significantly faster than the other ones yeah and then they start like and then they start kicking stuff down to the air like if i're appell i don't i don't release an ipad air three till what is an ipad air three i mean it's just a slower i think they don't bother i think they don't bother i'd straight up think they don't bother right like this is 599 for the 32 gig i think next year they'll

drop they'll drop the price in this 100 bucks they'll like then they'll just have the air two sitting around for whatever reason. Don't they need a cheap one for, I don't know, real estate agents? Yeah. You know, people are just like, a lot of people use iPads just is like point of sale terminals. Right. Or people only, like this thing is supposed to replace a computer. Right.

Right. The reason I said real estate agents is like I went to look at houses the other day and all she was using it for was to show pictures. Where you buy the house? Don't worry about it. Oh, wow. It's a thing. It's the thing I'm thinking about.

I'm going to stock it exclusive with iPads. Of course. Yeah, it's the thing. Okay, so. No, we're just like, we're just looking. Was that an upstate motion? It was a direction. Nicola, houseboat.

I was looking at houseboats and they exclusively had iPads. That'd be great. I would buy a houseboat iPad. If you had a boat, and I think about this conceptually all the time, you would not want to allow laptops on a boat. You know, if I had a boat, I'd go out on the ocean. Yeah. And if I had a pony, I'd ride him on my boat.

Oh my God. The show is so off the rest. No? I don't get it. I don't know. It's conclusively. Everybody look up on my pony on my boat and feel terrible for yourself for not knowing a lot.

I love it song. iPad Pro has all the same features as a big iPad Pro, except it doesn't have as much RAM, but whatever. Except the new things it has are a camera bump for its big 12 megapixel camera, which, I guess. So you can make pictures of the fireworks. You know, you're at the fireworks. You got the iPad.

No, they showed me a bunch of stuff. People scan documents. Because it's for, it's supposed to be a laptop. Uh-huh. That is actually, the camera bump is ugly and everyone should be ashamed. But the idea of a high-resolution camera in an iPad, very powerful because it's not for taking photos of vacation. It's so you don't have to buy a scanner?

Oh, no. I saw people taking vacation photos with the large iPad. Oh, yeah. No, of course. And that's great for them. But this is for, again, and it just keeps coming up. Like architects who go to job sites, and they're doing stuff on their big screens, and they just want to take a photo.

Or, again, real estate agents, you do like AR walkthroughs of rooms. This thing is supposed to be your main computer that you use when you're working. That's their idea. Yeah. So you get the feeling that IBM, who's their enterprise software partner, was like, our customers, what's happening? Yeah, there's a Cisor Vodka account. They're amazing.

I didn't know. They're doing, I don't know who they are. There's this Zazir Vodka Twitter account. What would make you actually use an iPad Pro as your computer? I'm trying to, for the next few days. A good browser. Yeah. Mobile Safari is fine.

It is a good browser, but it is not as good as Safari on a laptop. Yeah. It is not as good as Chrome. Well, and this thing, this small one in particular, doesn't have enough RAM to, like, have as many tabs open as I need. eventually things start to go and the other thing that I need honestly like this thing you can you can't get every single app in split screen

which is like starting to get annoying for the ones that don't support it. I thought you could just no you can do slide over but some both apps both your main app and your slide over app need to support split screen in order to get the split screen to happen that's ludicrous it's ludicrous but my main problem is I'm realizing that like I'm a three app person

kind of guy three app kind of guy I need like slack a browser and Twitter. Yeah. Right? Or, like, I need, I, I, I can get down to two, but getting down to two makes me feel bereft. Yeah. But three, I think I could do it.

I've given up Twitter. I'm getting there. Twitter for Mac is so bad that I often just quit it because it's beach rolling. I took out my doc. I was like, no. I'm done. Yeah. I miss a lot of stuff, but it keeps sticking, you know?

No, I have Slack. Anything that happens important on Twitter, someone will talk about in Slack. This is my new theory. click on the link and Twitter opens and like, that's the experience I'm having. You have. You have curators. I want to talk about one more thing. Yeah.

The true tone screen. I thought I would hate it. Love it. Yeah. It's like, you turn it off and all of a sudden the screen is like, yo, I'm super blue and like, garrish. I'm like, ah, this is terrible? Wait, this is what I've been looking at for the past five years. So can you tell when it's acting?

And you turn it. Yeah. I just watched it happen. It just got a little bit yellower. Blue? Yellow. That does look more pleasant. And we're in actually really white light right now, so this is really subtle.

in super yellow light, it's like maybe a little bit much. But if you just leave it on and forget about it, all of a sudden you're like, oh, yeah, this looks good. I noticed this was night shift. I turned it on night shift yesterday. I literally just learned about that, and I just turned mine on and I cannot wait for it to happen. Yeah. You can just turn on whatever. No, I just said it to sunset sunrise, so at 7.30, you know?

There's no science behind this, by the way. I like to pretend there is. Liz Lapado is, I think, currently investigating very deeply. Really? The fundamental lack of science we've gotten this. There's some. There's some science. There's definite science that like a screen,

a screen with blue light is bad, but there's less science about whether just turning out the blue light helps, is my understanding. But I could be wrong. Yeah. I shouldn't say these things. I feel like I'm making it more okay

to play on your phone until you close your eyes. That is almost certainly true. But I love it. I mean, it's definitely more pleasant to look at. Without question. And what's funny is that I hate flux on my laptop. Well, my wife does the assistive thing where you can like triple click the home button and it reverses the screen. Yeah.

And like sets it white to black. She does that at night. I just pressed. I just did it. I just did it and I love it. This orange screen. But now Instagram is going to look weird, huh? Well, no, because you get used to it.

It's like, it's more like looking at paper. The idea is it reflects. It more accurately reflects the light in the room. Well, no, that's night shift. She's looking at night shift. Yeah. Yeah, but True Tone actually reflects the color in the room. Right.

By, like, sensors. Does Trutone work alongside Night Shift? They're right there. I was wondering. Or does it negate the need for night shift? You can have both. And you can adjust the power of night shift, but Truton is either on or off. It's cool.

And, okay, I have one more thing to say. Do you want to read an ad? Because I have one more thing. Just say that one more thing. The little keyboard is really good. I thought I was going to be, it's too small, and the keys are really far separated, and I don't know. but maybe it's because I've accepted that keys don't need to have as much travel because I've been using the other Mac stuff.

But it took me maybe 45 minutes to just be flying on this thing. Yeah. Like it was a regular full-size keyboard. I've never had that experience on a keyboard this small before. Yeah. Really good. I mean, I think this, I'm saying, all of them have to have this connector now. Except the one angle thing is terrible.

I was in a meeting. Yeah, but they're going to make other, like other. Logitechicle makes one. Yeah, but it won't be as good as it. I was in a meeting the other day, and it was just the funniest thing happened, and I don't know why I think this is hilarious, but the people came in the meeting, and the one person was like, I'm going to take out some notes, I'll bring out my laptop, and they brought out an iPad Mini with a folding keyboard case,

and they just opened it up, and, like, it was their laptop, and I was like, I don't know. That's super weird. I'm not ready for this reality at all. You should actually question their judgment on whatever they proposed in that meeting. That is not a laptop. Trust me, I did. That's what I do in meetings. I'm going to read this.

Oh, one more question. Yeah. And I forgot what it was. Oh, God. Oh, no, so you have a MacBook. Yep. You were using this thing. Yep.

They're getting ever closer together. Yes, my MacBook is severely underpowered and this thing is severely overpowered. Yes. Are they, what's going on with the Mac? Do you think that they're just, I mean, they don't seem to know what it's for. Yeah, I think that you shouldn't assume that they have like a grand plan that is mysterious. You should just assume that, like, there's the Mac and it's doing its Mac thing. And the MacBook is basically waiting for a good Skylight process.

processor to get update the thing so it's not dog slow and then they're going to push the hell out of it and hopefully they release some more USBC adapter so you could actually do more stuff with it they have to they have to no they don't dude it's apple they got to make one of the port they will not give in to you they always do you the five years it'll be zero ports you're nuts if you think they're going to add a port they're going to add a port to the other side they're going to cut the battery in half they're going to take out the headphone jack it You're not to be using a wireless battery. Dude, you've been walking around after a watch in your back pocket.

I understand what you're saying. No, I think that they prove the idea. The MacBook Air is proof of this. They put out the original MacBook Air. It was ridiculous. And then they refined it into the most utilitarian computer available. Yep. With ports on both sides.

They will add another port to the other side of that. There you go. They're not dumb. They're just, I think that their big leap models are there to prove the point. this only has one port you got to figure it if you want to talk to this thing you got to figure it out okay everybody figured it out now here's another port i gotta tell you there's a sign in apple somewhere you really can't be clinton already fit a second port i don't know i just know that this is how they do things they force everybody to to figure it out and then they then they open up i feel like

out of stubbornness they were just like screw all of you maybe i i i just don't see them adding a second one I mean, it would make sense. I have to make a MacBook Pro with USBC ports. That will have two ports. That is what is pro about me. It's the second port. How many ports do you have? Is it three?

You've got a million ports on that thing. It's a lot of ports. I enjoy a number of ports. You will get a power cord if you're lucky. Nicola, do you ever plug any USB stuff into your MacBook air? Hella. Yeah, so many. I got the Ethernet cord.

Oh, wow. You're hardcore. You put your phone in? Yeah. I never plug my phone in my computer. it. No. Deeter,

I borrowed Dieter's lightning cable so much that he just bought me a charger. That's true. And, no, I got my, you got to charge my job on, you all kinds of stuff. So you use it as a gigantic battery. Yeah, it's my big battery.

You don't have, like, do connectivity, except for the Ethernet adapter. What would I connect to it? So, that was my question. And you use the Ethernet adapter because our office Wi-Fi is a little shaky. Yeah, it's not great. It's a great look for Fox Media.

Oh, hey. Burning the mothership. Kevin's got it. He's got it. Now, Brian Kevin. No, Kevin's got it under control. Easy. But I'm saying, the number.

Sorry. Everybody stop. Everybody stop. Kevin, you're welcome part of our family, Vox Media, your Wi-Fi situation. It's great. We're so connected. Oh, my God.

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Then push the button, then get some food to your house. Playded.com slash verge. All right. Let's talk about Vizio. I feel like this pencil doesn't work. Are you just coloring the whole screen? Well, I'm trying to, but the pencil seems to kind of not want to do it at the edges. All right.

So, I wrote a feature this week. Vizio. That I've been working on for a long time, actually. Because I've known about this plan for a while. But Vizio, which I think most of us don't think of as a big tech company, but they actually sell the most amount of televisions in America, which is a strange thought. They also made like a phone once.

They made a phone. They made a bunch of tablets. They wrote a bunch of tablets about their laptops. They've tried to expand many times. Those expansion plans have never gone off. They were all pretty nice. They made two generations of the laptops. They stayed in the laptop market for about two, three years.

And then they were like this. Then they were like, oh, my God, we decided to make laptops. So they tried to make a bunch of stuff. They didn't, but they have constantly sold TVs. Tons and tons and tons of TVs. They sell more TVs in America than anybody. Than anybody. And that's because they are really good at selling TVs in like what, Walmart and Best Buy?

They're cheap. They're cheap. They're very high quality. So right now, highest rated TV on CNET, second highest rated TV on the Wirecutter for M-Series. Gamers in particular love their TV. Because they ship with motions moving off by default? The new ones do. The old ones didn't.

They love them because they particularly source, I got a whole lecture about this, low-latency, G. So gamer, and the screens are fast. So like, video game nerds by Vizio TVs. Wow. But that's not why you should buy Vizio TV. Vizio, supported by

gamers. Do you need a long-reit in CHDM? A ringing endorsement. Yeah, that's great. No, they buy them. The Polygon staff, for example. Lots of Vizio TVs on the Polygon stuff. Anyhow, they,

they're smart, all smart TV platforms are garbage, I think is something that we can agree on. Yes. Just generally. They're fine. They can play Netflix at you and that most people are happy to accept that in their life. The best smart TV platform to date is the one that tried the least to be a smart TV platform. Which one's that?

That would be WebOS TV. Yeah. It was an interface and the whole interface was just there so that you could sling web streams at it. Yeah. Which is basically what Vizio is doing. Vizio just took it to the final conclusion. So Vizio's platform, smart TV platform, until now, was based on the Yahoo! internet widget platform.

It's a true fact. In what world did anybody propose that idea? Well, they picked it seven years ago. So they've been running with it for seven years. I'm like, I'm deep in this story with that. So they picked seven years ago. How many years ago did they realize they should stop that? Like two years ago.

Okay. So, but seven years ago, there was no Android TV. There was no real, Apple TV as a platform wasn't really available. Samsung wasn't doing Tyson. Yahoo was an up-and-coming startup seven years ago. It was probably the cheapest one input because their whole thing is they sell really good TVs for Lerprose. Anyway, so two years ago, the Chromecast came out and they went to Google and they said, we're going to rebuild our entire smart TV platform around Google Cast.

So we're going to take all of the interface off of the TV and we're going to put it all on a tablet that will ship. So they didn't go Android TV. So Android TV is an operating system for your television. It's just cast. So conceptually it's the same as having a cast dongle plugged into your TV. But in reality, there are no picture settings on the TV. There's no volume. You can see the volume meter, but everything happens on their app on a tablet they ship with the TV.

So the simplest way of saying is you can now get a 50-inch 4K HDR TV from Vizio with a 6-inch 1080P Android tablet for $1,000. Which is like a kind of like good combination of things. The more interesting thing to me is the idea that that TV is just an accessory for your phone. That like you want to change the brightness, you want to change the volume, you want to do all this stuff, you've got to like use an app on a phone somewhere. Also the app runs on everything. There's an iOS app, there's an Android app, and any other cast app can send things to TV. So YouTube can Netflix. So they don't have a smart TV operating system anymore.

They just have cast. I think this is like a revolutionary idea. And then I was reading her comments and people are like, so it's just a Chrome guest. It's like kind of hard to explain. Yeah, but if they sell a ton of these, and I hope they do, it might make, like, this isn't like a pro-Google thing, but cast as a standard is really good idea. And I think it's, in general, better than Airplay for playing stuff on the web. Because instead of like, da-da-da, through your phone, da-da-da-da, you're just like, this thing is on the internet, TV, play that thing that is on the internet or internet, put that thing on my TV, and then it just streams to your TV and, like, you're done. I just wipe my hands, podcast listeners.

Isn't this only good because smart TV interfaces are bad? Like if we got an actually good interface, wouldn't that be superior to this? It feels like a stopgap. Like, nobody's nailing this right now. Well, yes and no. At least we're not going to screw this up. The thing about this is, like, you know that the likelihood that cast, assuming that it, you know, that it's going to feel slow and crappy and out of date in five years is way less than

whatever magical interface. you have on a smart TV right now. It'll hold up better because all it is is saying, play this stream that the internet is pointing at me. The thing I don't like about it is when I'm sitting down on the couch with other people and we're like, what should we watch? The move is like you grab the remote

and then you like throw up the interface on the big TV screen that you can all see. And then you like poke around and someone's like, oh, that one. Like on a tablet, a little tablet, if all the navigation happens there, that social like let's figure out what we want to watch together. other thing kind of goes away. I find that to be one of the most panic-inducing moments of all time. What? What the hell are we going to watch? So do you just decide? I don't know. I don't think I

watch TV in groups that way. Yeah. I guess that like people, even like if you're, if you're sitting down with your wife, you, to pick something out. What happens in that situation is that I watch 90 trailers and she passes out. But I think that's like a normal. But yeah, like, let's click through the Apple TV interface. But like it's a tablet. If I'm just sitting there her, like we can just look at the gigantic tablet. That's not important. Don't you think? Yeah. You're talking about like a large group of people, but I find the

large group of people that's all started a screen just to be anxiety-inducing. No? No, that's fair. But like two people do you think you just got to sit next to each other, which... You can play the trailers on the tablet. Yeah. I mean, are you all reading the reviews together? I don't know. I don't know how people do things.

Here's what I have. Plus it comes with the remote. Oh, but yeah, the remote is, I think, that's the like pacifier. Yeah. The remote is if you're worried that you won't have a mute button or volume or you just want to turn the thing off, there's like, here are some buttons to do those things. Right. They're not really there to do anything else. But don't you think people are going to like just hang out to their pacifier? Like, you know, when you see those like five-year-olds who still have the pacifier?

Yeah, but I think that's why it's there. Yeah. I mean, the thing to me that is more interesting is right now the smart TV platform landscape is a disaster, right? It's Samsung runs Tysin, Sony runs Android TV, Apple has its own platform, LG runs WebOS, Insignia runs the Roku OS.

Panasonic has a thing. Firefox. It's a Firefox? Panasonic runs Firefox. There's no way you can introduce something new into that landscape and get Netflix to support you. There's no way that you're going to have the first class app on any, like none of them can guarantee that their app is

better than anybody else. Like, it is a race to the bottom. So you get a commodity app that gets ported to 50 platforms. That sucks. To me, that sucks. My Panasonic TV has the pre-Firefax Smart TVOS, and it is

just the hottest garbage in the world. And I don't know anybody who, like, loves their smart TV operating system. Even the Apple TV, which is probably the best of the breed, and I gave it a great review, is like a mess. It's just a mess and that remote you cannot hold it in your head and know which way is up i don't use it no i use

my harmony and click around just like the old apple tv and it never occurs me that i should use apps on this platform and i i get a lot of tweets from people who are like i put duct tape on my remote and now i know which way is up this is a thing that's insane putting people putting tape on their apple tv remote has become a real thing seems bad yeah i mean i'm still i didn't upgrade from the old apple tv because it didn't i mean it's the exact same interface only now there's a bunch of apps i'm not going to news. Yeah. I wish there was one.

It's also less stable than the old Apple TV. Really? It crashes. It's crash. It's how. That's awful. I don't think they have a real plan for that thing. Although literally, as we're going to air, Apple announced it's going to do its first

original series about app developers. Yeah, yeah. A scripted? I don't know. No, it's a reality show about app developers. Wait, really? It literally is we're going to air. I didn't say that.

Apple, this is in the post. Apple's first original TV show about app developers. And it's a reality show. Yeah. I think I'm going to love this. Ben Silverman, created a new TV show based on the world's app developers, designed to boost interest in Apple's App Store while making Hollywood interviews with producers and studios.

It's going to be hot. It's going to be sexy. It's going to be real. This is why Apple Music just took off. It's going to, man, there's way higher priorities for the app store than promoting it via an unscripted TV series. Yeah. Well, I mean, they're making an Apple music show with Dr. Ray called Vital Signs.

Yep, this is real. It's real. Think about it. Man, vital signs with Dr. Dres. I think a lot of people are going to think that he's a real doctor. And that's a show about healthy living. Why not? Make some kale smoothies, you know?

Yeah, Dr. Drey. Dishing healthy living tips. Yeah. How to improve your blood pressure. Cale, banana, alma milk. Lended up. I would watch Dr. Dre showing me how to make a great smoothie. How do you sit around in a group and pick what to watch?

Does that happen? Am I the only person who thinks it's like a worrisome? Well, because you know, Socializing New York is weird. You know, socializing New York is weird, and you almost never have anyone to your house. But when you do, at least in my case, it's usually a pre-romantic interaction. So that's really nerve-wracking because you're like, I don't know what you like. I want to watch this, but I'm not going to, do you like Broad City?

Like, what do you want to watch? You know? Yeah. It's nervous. I'd avoid it. I guess I don't have that particular attention. Yeah, no. We all got our own little things.

Because if you get it wrong, then it's like wrong. And watching something that you think. think it's funny with somebody who doesn't think it's funny? Oh, yeah. Just watching them is the worst. Oh, the Aziz one. I watched the first two episodes with a boy, and he didn't like it. What?

I didn't think it was funny, and I was like, ah. You kicked him to the curb after that, right? Yeah, no, we actually never saw each other after that. I was like, it was just like, you're off. He's too much of a stoner. I don't know. He didn't think things were funny. Wow.

Well, you should watch this after all for show with him. Nah, he's out. I know. My video TV isn't completely dumb. It still has creepy tracking software on it, right? So this is like a real thing. Nobody talks about it at all. All smart TVs have creeper tracking software on that.

What are they tracking? Are they watching? Yeah, they totally track what you watch. Yeah. What do they do with it? So Vizio is filing to go public. So what they're going to do with it, they're starting a rating service called InScape. They have 8 million TVs out in the world.

They collect 100 billion data points a day. So they can recognize linear television, right? That's the thing that they can. It's Shazam for your TV. So you watch stuff on a Vizio TV or Samsung TV, or basically any smart TV has ACR content in it, automatic content recognition. So it knows what you're watching.

Because they have no other way. Am I going to get targeted ads? Yeah, that's like part of it. But the real thing they want to do is sell the data up the chain and be like people are actually watching this because Nielsen doesn't really know. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Am I supposed to be upset about this?

Yeah, it's hard to know. Because in their IPO filing, they're like this is going to be your next business. Honestly, I don't care if they know what I'm watching. Really? I think people really care if they know what you're watching. What I think the big difference is, is Apple will confidently tell you, we know the rates of app crashes on our phones in which apps are crashing. They know what apps are running.

Absolutely they know. And big aggregate and nobody cares. But if you tell, why would I care? But if you tell people, they know what show you're watching. People freak out. I think that as long as you're anonymous is like, that's a big out. TiVo knows what you're watching. Part of TiVo's business is they, every TiVo box reports what you're watching.

you watch to the mothership in anonymous aggregate way, and then Teva does ratings data. Like, Netflix knows what you're watching, but you don't really care, right? I mean, I love that they know what I'm watching because then I get recommendations. Right. So this is, this is in every one of these things. I think it is very worrisome down the line that everyone wants to track you so everyone can deliver you a slightly more custom experience at every turn. Okay, but do you really hate targeted ads? You know what? I got a targeted a J-Crew ad yesterday. Tell me there was a 50% off sale going on. I was pulling. I was pumped.

Yeah. Would you buy anything? No, because I had just previously bought a bunch of J-Crew stuff when it was 40% on.

I would have been mad. You should have held out. Well, okay. This was for a J-Crew outlet and I was like, well, you know that the outlet is not the same thing. Exactly.

That was why I... Ooh, deep racked reporting on this if you're looking from the information. I actually did read the reaction. Great. Wonderful. I don't know how I feel about actually like custom things.

I'm like worried that... Just in general. It's custom things. All custom things. All custom things. No, no, I'm worried about getting fed back things that are like, you'll like this, will lead to like, what if you never expand your mind

and you just wind up living in this bubble of like, I like this, I'll like this, I like this, it's four stars, it's five stars, four starts, five stars. You never see anything that changes your mind of anything. That's ideal. If I could live in a bubble of happiness. But don't you want to see stuff that makes you be like, whoa, what is that?

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No, it's just Verge. Just Verge. It's always just Verge. 3DR.com slash verge. Yo, I saw a drone in Williamsburg at nighttime, like a nightlife drone. Did it have a gun? I hope not. A nightlife drone?

Well, it was nightlife time. It was, what? Like, it was like midnight. Does a nightlight drone just like have a little cup of bourbon in Williamsburg? Well, you know about the vibe drone, you know. The vibe drone? Yeah, to go check out what the vibe is before you go. Oh, yes.

And I was like, oh man, this is like the vibe drone, but it was just a guy. And it felt weird. I was like, man, really you're doing this right now, right here? A vibe drone. We got to get in on this. Did you see Portlandia had an. episode that was kind of basically the same thing. No.

Where they sent a drone to a festival so that like people like aging, aging festival goers don't actually have to go and experience the festival. And the whole episode's about the drone goes to the festival for them. And then you get a certificate that says he went to the festival at the end of it. But then, of course, the drones get in trouble and they caught up a biker. And it's a great episode. I got, I never really got into Portland, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. What? I try. I try super hard. It might be too real. Oh, man. it's close.

All right. Lightning round. Kindle emergency update. If you don't update your Kindle, it goes off the internet. Actually, it's already done. It's already done. Whatever, whatever.

Windows 10, mobile update promise, broken. Nobody cares. I mean, who's shocked by this? They did it twice. I still remember, I exclusively reported that they were breaking the promise to Windows phone 7 users

that they wouldn't get 8, and the entire Microsoft internet got super pissed at me. People were mailing him knives. Yeah. This time, everyone was like, yeah, that's what we deserve. Jesus. It justifies the Limea 1020 score. Every Lumia score we've ever given is super justified.

You know that ecosystem score? There it is. Yeah. And Apple Watch score, super justified. Ask me tomorrow what I'm, but just ask me. Anyway. Can't wait until tomorrow. Google making an iOS keyboard.

Would you use Google's keyboard on your iPhone? It has Google search built into it. So from your keyboard, you can do a quick Google search and then go back to your other thing. No. Gentlemen. All third-party keyboards on the iPhone are awful. That's the only reason I wouldn't use it. The Gawker verdict.

Hulk Hogan wins. Pornow ruined forever. That's not true. It just makes me sad. Yeah. Like in four different ways. I don't, you know, don't put some sex tapes online. Yeah, it's right fair.

Especially when they're not. He didn't, okay. Keep it real simple. I feel like the Gawker Mean Kids Club just hit the wall of what they're lots to do. Facebook no longer supports Blackberry. This lighting around is all over the problem. I can't believe it. I thought BlackBerry's hot for a comeback.

The people are ready. I can't usually. You try. You try to sell it? That's true. Usually Facebook is on the ball. And this time they're like way late. Facebook supported Blackberry in 2016.

That's true. Wow. That's really good news here. Jux spin. GDC just happened. PSVR feelings. Awesome. Cool.

Going to be the winner by the end of the year. At the end of the year, the PlayStation VR is going to be the most important VR beginning of 2017. Interesting. I'm definitely buying a PS4 for it, which means I think I'm out of $1,000 because they don't currently have a PS4. Yep. Yeah, but it's cheaper than buying everything else. A lot of VR, right? That is very true.

Which, like, probably going to be a ton of games. Seems cool. Have you gotten in that cave yet? Yeah. What do you think? What's your VR situation? I played the one where you're in the office. It's super fun.

Yeah. Yeah. You were starting on the vibe. And then I also did the where you can draw and you can be inside of your drawing. So you're doing the vibe. It made me worried because it. It's like, what if people get, what if you're a kid and, you know, being a teen is hard and then being inside of theirs better. And they're like, I don't want to leave here.

And then you go into the real world and I can't wait to get home and just go back into the place where I feel good. It's worrisome. Yeah, that's definitely the worry with VR. But nothing about VR at this moment makes me feel that worry. It's too expensive to get into how are the teens even going to get it. I mean, they're going to get it. Yeah. I don't think teens are going to be dissuaded from a $400 place accessory or $99.

They got grandma. They got Dairy Queen job. Yeah, Grams and Dairy Queen, together at last. Between the two, those kids are never leaving the other reality. Both Sony and Microsoft were rumored to be upgraded into consoles in various ways. Yeah, that's cool. The upgrade rumors happened a little bit faster than I expected, but yeah, everybody knew that eventually this would happen. How does it work with consoles there?

Because I thought like the thing. They upgraded the 360. This happens with every major console. Yeah, but they didn't upgrade the core hardware, right? The graphics didn't get better, didn't get a fast. or processor. They just changed the body. No, they upgraded the internals on the 360 for sure.

I feel like it was like Wi-Fi or something, though. No, they did some other stuff. I'm not surprised by this. I'm also not stressed about it. Well, we put all GDC coverage here on this list. So all GDC coverage. It's just a lot of GDC. I wanted you to like peruse it and see if there's anything that interested

you. Oh, I see. Yeah. I'm going to spend more time preparing for the show. Anyway, that was the Vergecast. It was a hot mess, but I'm having it. happy that everyone's back. Check out all GDC coverage at the verge.com.

Jake, do you want to do our engagements? You have to say three social things that they should follow us on. Follow us on Snapchat at Verge. Yes. Nailed it. Nailed it. If you're following the real verge, it is no longer the real verge. Follow us on Facebook.

Facebook.com slash verge and YouTube.com slash verge. Very important. We just hit 1 million subscribers. We literally pop bottles with champagne. in this office. Most of the sham's pain spilled on the floor. Don't you want to be like a million other people?

Get out. Sheepal. Get out. Yeah. Follow Ratt instead. Yeah. Come on us. To be like slightly fewer people.

Yeah. Ratt had a very nice feature on Banana Republic today. Oh, really? And yeah, and how they like screwed up trying to be edgy. Yeah, do that. Give me two minutes on how the banana

fucked it up. Well, they hired a creative director. and she's fancy, but not fancy enough that the regular people knew about her. Her name's Marissa Webb. You know her? Nope. Probably not. But some people did, you know, and they tried to go up high, and it just, like, was just not,

they just didn't hit it right, and the people didn't like it, and now they're back to. That's how what Manor Republicans for. Well, but Jay Crude did it. So it's like this tempting thing, or it's like, ooh, a mall brand managed to climb higher, and, like, maybe we could do that, too, but it was too, like, it was too, like, following the exact same footsteps as J. Crew, so it didn't... Wait, didn't J. Crew, like, almost go bankrupt because they screwed up a sweater or something? The tippy or whatever?

What? That's the name of the sweater. Fashion world is bewildering sometimes. There's not that much money there, so things just go crazy. That's one weird thing about fashion. There's not that much money there. Yeah. But you could put out a nylon sport band every three months.

Fashion. Fashion. Fashion. Anyway, that's our show. There's many other shows to listen to. Most of which I have to say far more focused and with far fewer references to the Holococin sex tape. You can listen to What's Tech every Tuesday with Chris Plant. You can listen to Control Out Delete every Thursday with me and Walt Mossberg.

The Verge ESP, which sleeper hit of the Verge lineup with Emily Ishita and Lizepato, one of my favorites. That comes out on Fridays. Lauren Good has Too Embarrass to Ask over on the Recode network. Recode itself has Recode decode. Probably one of the coolest podcasts with Karras Whisher, a lineup. of luminaries and Peter Kafka's Recode Media, where if you really want to get deep on the Hogan stuff, that's what's

happening. Probably. But you should actually just delete all those and just listen to the show because you are a masochist and you enjoy unstructured technology conversations. That's it. Please go to iTunes.com slash Theverge and give us five stars. Please give us one star on iTunes for every single time we diverge what we're supposed to be talking about. No, but additive stars. Yeah, add them every time.

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Get a free dinner for two with your first delivery. That's plated.com slash verge. That's it. Get some food in your mouth from a box. Playedatidot.com slash verge. We're out. Rock and roll. Later.