The Vergecast - Oculus Go, Movies Anywhere, and Windows Phone died again

Episode Date: October 13, 2017

We’ve got a bloggy Vergecast today. In between review weeks, a few things popped up in the news that Nilay, Dieter, and Paul needed to talk about. Google is integrating video chat into a phone but still not text; you can now watch all the movies you’ve purchased online in one place; Apple is on a “hype cycle” talking about AR; and Windows Phone died again. But that’s not all. There’s a whole lot in between that — like the segment Paul does every week, “You know Dan, the duck face is no longer cool” — so listen to it all and you’ll get it all.  07:28 - Android Messaging rant 18:49 - Hollywood studios join Disney to launch Movies Anywhere digital locker service 26:07 - Google will “permanently remove” Home Mini feature that led to constant recording 32:21 - Apple hype cycle 38:02 - Oculus announces new $199 self-contained VR headset called Oculus Go 49:59 - Windows Phone is dead 58:17 - Paul’s weekly segment “You know Dan, the duck face is no longer cool” 1:01:50 - Amazon finally makes a waterproof Kindle, after 10 years of Kindles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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To learn more, visit www. www.snapdragon.com slash gigabit today. Hello, and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of the Verge Media Empire. which is a sub-empirate to the Vox Media podcast empire. Wait, that doesn't make any sense. Yeah, no, it makes perfect sense. The whole Virgil empire is not a sub-emperor.

The Venn diagram is that our podcasting empire is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Can we get back to the boat and captains? I was doing really good one. I'm the captain now. We're about to have sub-boats, submarines. We're about to have submarines. So this is the Vergecast.

It's a show about technology and culture and... At some point in the next 10 minutes, Eli is going to introduce us. Zygby. Dieter Bone is in the studio today. Hi, everybody. Hey, Dieter. How's going to, man?

It's good to see you. It's good to just see you, man. Paul Miller is here. Hello. And as always, Iron Mania Boutel, the captain. I don't know what that means. So we're going to start a little bit differently today. We're going to promote ourselves.

I'm just going to be honest with you. I'm going to do just a couple minutes of promotion. So are you saying that we're not going to just get right into it? We're not going to just get right into it. I will tell you a true story. Less than an hour and a half ago, somebody told me that I was too humble. Whoa. And you need to be more shameless in promoting.

See, we're taking that advice. Whoever that person was, I hope you're listening to this. No, we have a bunch of stuff going on. I just want to call it all out. Just pay no attention to the fact that I'm involved in two of the things. So if you love this show, we get a lot of. of request to have the Virchast be a video show. I'm really against that. We've done it in the past. We did it CES in January. We've done it all kinds of different ways in the past. It's been fun,

but I will just tell you this. I think people listen to the Verdecast are interested in things like user data. When we made the show an audio-only show, our subscribers started going up. It seemed like people were happier with us. It was easier for us to make the show. It's easier for us to talk about things like smart home standards in the open web, and we don't have to figure out how to illustrate them in video. Yeah. Because they're obviously very wonky. So I think the Vergecast needs to remain an audio podcast.

But we have always known people want to watch us play with gadgets. So we have a new show, Circuit Breaker Live. It's on Twitter. Paul and I are on that show. Deeter has been on that show every week. The two weeks we've done it. We've been running videos of Deeter. Ashley Carman's on that show.

Jake Hesterakis on that show. Heim's on that show. We're bringing in people from around the Verge staff. Ben's been on it. Megan's been on it. It's basically just us goofing around with gadgets for an hour. It's every Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern, live on Twitter. The replay is on the site the next day on the website.

I could go into the media economics of that, but no one wants me to do that. I'm just telling you, it's on Twitter live 4 p.m. Eastern. There's also we slice out bits and put those on Twitter too. And then you can watch replay on the site. So if you're Love the Virtrast, you've always wanted a video version of this. That is very much what we're trying to do with Circuit Breaker Live. Check that out. That's one promo.

That was good. That's good for a long. I'd watch it. I really like being validated in real time. The second show, if you're into Mr. Robot, which actually is one of my favorite TV shows, I will admit the second season, last season, a little slow.

Season three looking good. Everyone's saying it's bouncing right back. It's really good this season. It's clipping right along. We're doing the Mr. Robot Digital After Show again this year. So once you're done watching Mr. Robot on USA on Wednesdays, click over to their Facebook page. There's actually ads on TV for our show, which is wild.

You can jump over to it. their Facebook page or their YouTube page, or I think it's everywhere. Just find it. And you can watch me, Russell Brandon, Megan Furkman-ish, do the after show. We did our first episode last night, Wednesday night. Portia Doubleday was on the show with us. Just a good time. If you're into Mr. Robot, check that out.

It's happening right now. So that's my, the two things I'm doing that I'm promoting. I apologize for promoting myself. But here's the real thing that I'm actually excited to promote. I've been talking at the end of the Vergecast for weeks now about why did you push that button? the new podcast with Caitlin Tiffany and Ashley Carman. It is great. I commend the both of them and our producer, Andrew from Moreno,

for putting up with my incessant feedback on this show. But it's so great. I couldn't stay away from it. It's starting next week, October 17th. You can already go into iTunes or Spotify or wherever you listen and subscribe to it. It's there. It's called Why Did You Push That Button? And we got a little promo for it that we're going to run on this show right now.

Do you turn a red receipt on? Have you ever super liked someone on Tinder? Do you have your ex's Netflix password still after all these months, really? Are you liking pictures that celebrities post on Instagram, maybe of their butts? We 100% see you doing that. Hi, I'm Caitlin Tiffany. And I'm Ashley Carman, and in our new podcast, Why Do You Push That Button? We are talking to everyone.

We're talking to our friends. We're talking to parents. We're talking to product designers. All about the itsy-bitsy, tiny little decisions that technology forces us to make. We're going to talk about superlikes, read receipts, sending nudes, stalking people on Venmo, liking things on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook, all the little weird behaviors that you do. And how they impact our lives, because they have strange social repercussions, as we've learned. You can find us anywhere you typically listen to podcasts.

We're on Spotify, we're on Apple's podcast app. Really, we are everywhere. Our first episode is going live on October 17th. So please listen. really great if you did. That is really good. It's really good. Ah.

Yeah. It's like a real podcast. It's like they know what they're doing. Yeah, it's been really, I will say this. This has been the one podcast that we've had. So everyone's like, it'll be like the bird chest. I'm like, don't do that. Because this is a mess.

This is all, you know, lots of listeners. They're into the mess with us. But just this is not a model for your life. Don't be like us. Yeah. So it's really great. their first episode is on Superlikes on Tinder. When is the Venmo episode?

It's common, man. They're just wait for it. I'm not saying I'm not going to listen to Superlikes episode, but I've been really curious about how to Venmo. Let's go ask them. It's coming. We're trying to do this one seasonally, so we're going to like 10, 12 episodes, take a break, come back.

This is very exciting. But, yeah, their pitch for it was we make these apps, product designers design choices into the apps, and then users make those choices, and there's actually a gap, and we're just going to investigate the gap. And I think that's just one of the smartest and quite frankly virgiest ways

of thinking about technology, and they're off to the races. So next week, October 17th. This ends the hype portion of the Vergecast. If you've been skipping ahead, this is a good time to stop, but don't. If you've got that 30-second skip forward, we can put a little padding right here

so that you can get back. We know why you push that button. So now, Paul, I can get right into it. Okay. And I'm going to demand the Dieter talk to me that's something that he insisted on tweeting last night, which is Google's messaging situation. Look, none of this is new.

Yeah. But I have been thinking nonstop about the fact that there are two billion Android users right now. And near as I can tell, at least a billion of them are using, like, Google Play versions of Android, official Google versions. The other billion is, you know, in China and whatever.

And the fact that Google insists on playing nice with carriers and letting them give it a go with RCS. Their new messaging. It's a new messaging standard. They think people are using Allo, which nobody's doing that at all. I'm done. I am just, I'm sick of it. You have a billion users. Whatever fear you have that carriers are going to switch to Tysen,

is unfounded. Google, you have a ton of leverage. Just use it. Just take Allo, build it into the SMS app, build it into messaging, have it work like I message where if you detect an Allo on the other end, then it'll send it via Allo. And if it doesn't, it'll send it a regular text message.

You already have Allo on iPhones and you already know people's phone numbers. So you can do it. This isn't the standard Android rant where people are like, I wish they just had SMS inside alo, so I only had to have one icon on my home screen. No, just do the locking thing. Do the Apple thing. Just do it because you will instantly gain a billion users

for your messaging app instead of the 50 that you have now. And I won't have to fight with basically everybody about which messaging app I communicate on them with. Because, like, my parents are like, well, it's MMS, but I'm a mess. So sometimes I try and do Facebook Messenger, but then they forget to use it. And some people are WhatsApp, but also they're not. And then some people are Facebook Messenger, but also they're not. And there's signal and teller, like, there's, you know, the giant folder of shitty messaging apps.

And if Google just did the IMessage thing, they'd pick up a billion users and people would just start migrating to it. And because they're happy to put that shit on iPhone, it would just win. Well, it would win compared to whatever it is they're doing now. It would be a win for Google. Would it be a plan? Would it be WhatsApp? It might not be WhatsApp. I think it would have a really good chance to taking on Messenger.

Yeah. I think you have a pretty decent chance to take it on IMessage. So I have two questions and then a follow-on suggestion. Yeah. This is how I'm choosing to format. By the way, here's how I edit the rant. A bit just a tertiary comment. Yeah, go ahead.

I'm an open standard zealot, and this Google messaging shit is too much even for me. So that's my first question. Yeah. To the floor. I don't. There's just a lot of model UN coming out of me right now. Yeah. That's not very Googly, right?

Like that's not their play, usually. No, it's usually not. Their play is we're going to force the standard to be the standard and it's going to be open and then we'll provide the service layer inside the standard that everybody likes. That's a very nice play when you are dealing with people who whose interests are not to screw over consumers. But who they're dealing with here are carriers. And so the idea that you can just assume the best of everybody else in the ecosystem does not apply. So how did SMS win and MMS win? Because there was literally nothing else except for like BBM, but that came later.

Right. And also because SMS was a thing that worked by accident. It was not designed for texting. It was like an extra thing that they threw on top of, you know, the cell phone standard so they could like send like, you know, messages about whether or not the network was working, not actually meant for. communication. It was a hack. And everyone was like, oh, shit, we have this hack. And then it just kind of grew from there. So that's why SMS won that first round. It lost the second round because it's a garbage thing. Was it Apple's original, maybe it was just with FaceTime. Didn't Apple originally say, like, here's our thing, but then we're going to open it up. They did.

Yes. Why couldn't Google do that? They could do that. Where they just like, here's our thing. We're going to force it into the... So that's what they're trying to do with RCS. Well, but so no. RCS is controlled by the carriers. Google has a suggested implementation, and they will offer you RCS, like, back-end services if you're a carrier so that you don't have to worry about how to set it up. But it's up to the carriers to figure out how to do it,

and none of them are incentivized to really do it, and they all have slightly different takes on them. I mean, that's MMS. I mean, that's actually the problem with MMS. Right. The context here, like the thing that, like, haunts this discussion is that AOL and Instant Messenger is getting shut down.

Yeah. And the thing that convulsed instant messaging back in the day was there was AOL versus ICQ versus MSN versus Google chat, G chat. And AOL and ICC basically merged. Well, AOL bought ICQ. And then the government was like, hey, no, you guys got to open up and interoperate. And then that happened. But something in that process ran into the beginning of the switch to mobile.

And everything just sort of started spinning down. There was a phase there where, because Google Talk. We had like two years of beautiful interoperability. What was that, what was that open one called? The Google Talk was. The XMLRPC standard that allowed everything to work together. Gmail was like an email server. Yeah.

But for, it's the message, your Google account was like a server for this open standard. And you had like the nice white label version if you're using Google Talk. Yeah. So this is my suggestion. Is that the government come in and say everything has to interact? I don't, I'm not going to suggest that this current version of our government do anything. I would prefer if they would just stop, which I think is the first time I've espoused a conservative principle. If the government could just stop for a while, that would be great.

Everybody just shut up. All of you just please don't do anything. That's all I ever wanted. Don't pass any laws. Don't do anything. Don't speak. Yeah, we agree. Don't show up for work.

It would be great. If the entire government, federal government, would just stop showing up. You know what we should do? That would be great. We should buy everybody in the government Nintendo switches and just like load some games on there. And they're like, oh, what if I just play this? I mean, if anybody. Or just drop them a link to like a clicker game like once a day.

Donald. Can you crush the candy? That's not, I don't know how candy crush works. It's not a clicker game. I'm sorry, Paul. It's a shape matching. It's a match game. It's a match three is a.

They're called. There you go. I only play AAA games because I'm a real game. It's not also true. No. There's a great piece of motherboard about how the model that the government used to open AOL. And some messenger could be applied to Facebook. It's very smart.

You should go read it. That's not actually my suggestion. My suggestion is way more, way dumber. Way stupider. Let's hear it. Google should just rebrand, like, aloe or hangouts or whatever, is G-chat, which every. Everyone loved. Everyone loved G-chat.

Yeah. And we're like, here's G-chat for mobile. Remember this product you loved? We've brought it back. It's virtually the same. It's just on your phone now. Neil, that is a great, great marketing plan for 40-year-olds. Nice job.

People would use it. People still use G-chat all day long. My mom loved, I always thought of it as Google Talk. Am I thinking of a... Google Talk was first, and then it was a whole thing. It was a whole thing. It was rebranded as G-Chatch. Like, if I was in my email,

My mom could talk to me. Yeah. She loved that. Yeah. Remember when all the services also had an open API so you could download like one client? Yep. Like trillion. Pigeon.

Pigeon. Pigeon. Adium. Adium. Adium was amazing. So we've begun the Vergecast by talking about Open Standards. Once again. By the way, if you didn't believe Nelai that like this wouldn't make a good video show, we just proved you wrong.

You don't want to look at us all we're talking about it. I assure you. Do you want to see me gesticulate? wildly with my hands. We're making that open standards face, you know. All right. Anyway, that had nothing to do with any news other than it just made me angry because I just think about it. It's time for us to all think about, are we going to, it's flagship phone time. Well, they just announced the pixel two.

Yeah. Are you going to switch ecosystems? It's a whole thing. And what does Apple have? But I was talking to somebody, because BlackBerry put out the BlackBerry motion this week. Yeah. And it just came up. So I was like, what about this new BlackBerry?

And I was like, I don't know. Why would you want a mid-range Android phone? And they're like, man, I used to love BlackBerry. I was all on BBM. And it occurred to me that BBM seemed like the ultimate lock-in for Blackberry, but it was actually brittle. And the minute they lost an advantage, people abandoned BBM. Yeah. And so IMessage is like, we talk about IMessage lock-in constantly, but I wonder if it's that as brittle.

Interesting. It's like the Titanic. It's a great ship. It's like unsinkable. I don't think it's as brittle. I think that I message has a, much wider user base and it has a user base

that involves more personal relationships than BBM did and that's a little bit unfair to BBM users. They definitely talk to their friends and family on it but there are way more people using IMSage to talk to their friends and family in specifically like group chats.

It's also way more deeply embedded into teen culture and youth culture than BBM ever was. BBM was Like, it was like, it was niche relative to the scale of a pie message. Right. To each number, by the way, that I brought Gossip Girl up on a show.

That's great. I'm winning. Good for you. Yeah. There were some comments on the- Does the writer of Gossip Girl have a new show? I know. What are you saying?

There's some comments. Actually, I want to know about the Gossip Girl thing. But there were some comments on the piece I wrote about, you know, I felt like Google's try-harding. And, of course, I had to end my piece. piece about iMessage. And so most of the comments are about iMessage and WhatsApp. And so, yeah, some teens were saying, like, at my school, you are not cool if you can't

be in IMessage group texts. Yeah. Yes. That's a thing. Just full stop. Anil Dash for other great piece ages ago about blue bubbles versus green double. I just got a blue bubble on my phone. There you go.

Speaking, I have a tweet about the blue bubbles. Which showed up on your computer. I'm reading another one of my tweets on the air. Apple has the message that they tell you that. Cool people are blue and lame people are green. Google's messaging strategy, the thing that they imply to you, is the person who shows up on your front door. I'm not, it could be a particular region, but it's multiple religions. And Google's implied message to use, have you heard the good news about rich communication services?

That was a tweet? Yeah. It's a pretty wrong, complicated tweet. We got to go back to 140. It was really quick. Yeah. Do you have 280? going on with you're moving on we actually have to talk about real news not just my complaints on the same

sort of thematic vibe yeah this is actually quite exciting to me okay probably only to me uh headphone jacks it's not headphone jammed uh disney launched a new thing oh yes called movies anywhere they've they've always sort of had a digital locker for movies so if you buy a disney movie and you have disney app on some other platform you can watch a disney movie the new one movies anywhere. They got all the major studios to work with them. Importantly, they also got Apple to work with them. Yep. So now if you buy

a movie on Google Play or Voodoo, it'll show up in iTunes. If I a movie in iTunes, it'll show up on Google Play in Voodoo. Which is crazy. I could not believe that this happened. It's finally happening. They're going to, something, there is like a fan fiction. There is definitely a catch where you do this and you have the beautiful cross-platform dream and you're not locked into any single

content providers platform. but also they get to like... There's like a courtesy of iTunes watermark. Light your bed on fire when they feel like it. They get to sneak into your house. We haven't used to watch the movie with you. Yeah, exactly. Our DRM is very personal.

It's the police show up at your house. They're ready to arrest you at any moment. Doesn't this seem like it's too good to be true? Does it work retroactively on stuff I've already bought? So we have not... You can sign up to like... You have to sign up for the app and then you get the app. So we're still waiting.

Last night when I tried to sign up, the whole website was crashed. Which shocking amount of demand for digital locker services, I have to say. Oh, I'm signing up right now on the podcast. I mean, that's what we're here for. Online shopping together. So I sign in with Google, Facebook, or manual login? So you're eventually going to have to link them all, right? This is, I think, one of the here.

So this is one of the... Oh, man, I'm just checking boxes on terms of service without reading them right now. This is going to be super fun. So what I'm saying is I think this is one of the big catches here. you're eventually going to have to link all these accounts because you're going to start sharing a lot of data. They all do different things with that data, so you just have to be aware.

They get to know that I've watched Wonder 1 or 1 like four times already. Yeah. Can I just... You have to use the Movies Anywhere app, which seems strange to me. What to get them from place to place? It's unclear. So the mechanics of how it works are still a little unclear.

There's already been reports that, you know, iTunes just starts showing you movies, which is great. there's a whole thing with iTunes, right? The new Apple T4K, you buy it. Apple automatically upgrades your library to 4K HDR. Is that going to pass over to the other platforms where those movies are priced a little bit higher? Are they going to be in a price war because now you can be across all the platforms?

I figured out the catch. In order to connect iTunes, movie store, to movies anywhere, you have to open the iTunes app. Yeah, which is the worst. It's terrible. Keep going. I mean, we just promoted a podcast, which demands it. Here's an argument in favor of this being a video show. The logo for key.

So Paul is showing me the logo. The DRM technology at Disney uses that they've all signed up to use. It's a fanciful. It's a key with a Disney logo in the middle. It's an old-time key. The lock, the... That is just the jaws of DRM. It's a dragon head.

No, but it's got a Mickey Mouse. Look at that. Yeah. It's like Mickey Mouse turning into a dragon to eat your files. Yeah. And the kill consumer rights. It's called KeyChry. to building out on that DRM.

Okay. But the dream now finally is that if you're on every platform but iTunes and these movies anywhere, you know, like, I want to watch Wonder Woman and you click the button. Yeah. And it presents you a list of retailers. Yeah. So they might have to compete on price because you're going to want to buy it.

Yeah, but on the Apple TV, you can only buy from iTunes. On the app because it's Apple. Yeah. So I think this is really exciting. I think this is like that moment of we're just going to start buying movies on our TVs for real. that's, we're not going to be locked in the ecosystems or platforms, has arrived. It also, I think it's really interesting that Apple just launched the Apple TV 4K. They did this whole thing about 4K HDR movies.

They're pricing them lower. They're upgrading all your library content. Yes? Y'all, I'm looking at a library that includes all of the movies I've ever purchased on Google Play, iTunes, Voodoo, and Amazon. Moviesanywhere.com slash my dash movies. Wow. So when you hit play, what happens? Well, I don't know.

What do you want me to hit play on? Obviously, Fast and Furious Tovio Drift, right? Yes. So if I hit play. It's just playing right here inside the web player in my browser. Interesting. So I bought that particular movie on Google Play. I want to see if it's going to have the fast forward.

So now if you go into iTunes on your computer, does it show up there? That is an excellent question. Library. Keep keep talking while I just play with iTunes. No, this is great radio. This is... I'm not even kidding. Like, this is...

This is crazy. This is actually really exciting to me. Yeah. So what they've done is they've linked all their DRM subscription services. They've all agreed to use Disney's DRM. But the context that I want to provide is, like, Apple just made this big move to have lower prices. Do not see it in iTunes yet, but I'm not worried about it. So Apple just made this big move to have lower prices and upgrade your existing library.

It is unclear if that carries forward. And also... We just had this long Apple TV 4K review, and it's the most expensive streamer on the market, bar the Nvidia Shield. But the only reason you'd buy it is because you have a huge iTunes library. And now it doesn't matter because you're going to be able to migrate that library and watch it in other services or are the movies anywhere else?

I'm still shocked that this happened. Right. I never would have expected this to happen. So I'm convinced that Apple made the deal with the studios. Disney, not part of that 4K HDR deal with Apple. Right. So Apple made this deal with all these studios to get the cheaper pricing on 4KHDR to have the retroactive library upgrade. Disney not part of that deal. Disney doesn't have a lot of 4KHCR content yet. It's Pirates 5 and Guardians 2. But you can see where Disney was saying you have to be a part of this in order for us to do the other thing. And I bet that this is a huge part of that negotiation. Deals. What do we talk about? Open standards and deal making. Another catch. When you sign up, you get some free movies, and one of them is Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Men, Tell No Tales, which is a huge bummer. Is that five? I have no idea.

Maybe Disney should make a messaging service. Right? I assume they have. So that's exciting news. We'll see how it goes. We're going to do a lot more testing and screwing around with it. This is honestly, I'm excited about it and so it's Ryan Bishop and so is Chris Welch. So we're into it. All right. Uh-oh. I'm getting an error page. Yeah, it's like apparently so popular It's crashing

Yeah, I'm trying to connect My iTunes account is already connected I'm working on my Amazon account I was playing the paperclip game last night Yeah, yeah Real popular Yeah And it just died on me

I was so close Have you played space plan? No It's good It's on phones now But it's better in a browser And it's a little bit less of a commitment than the paperclip game

But I was like really It involves potatoes So it's the Martian All right, Dieter. You got into a story this week about the Google Home Mini. Yeah, so I can't take credit for this. The story is Artem over at Android Police. Somehow noticed that his Google Home Mini was acting up.

He saw the lights on it. He was happening to look at his My Activity. Fun fact, if you use Google Assistant on any device, you can also do this in Amazon. You can look at the history of all the queries. And his history was just thousands of random recordings of his house. The thing was constantly recording on and off, on and off, on and off all the time.

He discovered, and Google verified that the mini had a feature where you could hold your finger down on the top, and that would, you know, trigger the assistant to ask a question so you didn't have to say, okay, Google. And so I think Google just screwed up the capacitive button with the fabric on top. It's like a hardware problem. Yeah. Yeah. And so wrote the story, you know, about what happened over at Android Police.

Google put out a statement. They fixed it right away. They disabled the top button. We're like, okay, maybe they'll bring it back. They'll figure out that they can fix it with software. And out of an excess of caution and to make everybody feel good about this thing not listening to them,

they've turned off the top button, capacitive button entirely. Now you can just turn the volume up, turn the volume down. That's it. I don't think you can tap it to even stop it at this point. Really? I haven't tried it.

Can you mute the microphone still? That's on the side. That's a switch. Yeah. The mute thing on the mini is a whole other issue. Dan did the review. And if you ask Google to mute it, it will mute, but you can't unmute it unless you go to the switch and like toggle it. Yeah.

So the switch doesn't actually necessarily guarantee what the state of the thing is. Anyway, that's fine. I think the Google Home Mini sounds way better than the Dot. And the Google Assistant is a little bit more natural to talk to than the Dot than Alexa is. But Alexa has a huge advantage in ecosystem size. And Alexa now is starting to begin to support multiple voices, which was Google Home. primary advantage, to be honest. So, yeah, like, think of the number of ways that a home speaker could launch could be botched.

Yeah. And it accidentally records everything that you say is everybody's literal worst fear. Yeah. And that's what happened. Now, it happened on pre-re, like, early release devices. They didn't tell us they were beta, but they were handing them out at the Google event. They're giving them to reviewers. none of this will affect actual retail models.

Right, because you'll plug it in and I'll do a software update. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm willing... But in terms of PR nightmares, this is at the very top of the list. Yeah. I agree with you. But it's not the problem... I don't know.

The problem itself is so stupid. Right? Like, oh, the problem isn't... They screwed up the button. Google engineered the thing to listen to you all the time, or the problem isn't Google got hacked, or the problem is, like, the assistant just woke up. one day became self-aware and started listening.

The problem is they fucked up the design of a button. Yep. Right? And the button is the record button. Yep. And that is just stupid. Yeah, the number one fear is a malicious company making a voice assistant. But the number, I think a big fear for Google right now should be, are we good at making

hardware? Yeah. Right? Yeah. I think that's a bigger problem. I think another fear is like, will we just get lumped in with Facebook and be seen malicious because that, right? There's like ads on Russian ads on Google too.

But yeah, you're right. The main problem is like, we're a hardware company now. This button doesn't work. This mute switch doesn't do what it says. I don't know. I mean, I'm inclined. Again, to me, if I could just say something other than OK Google, hey Google, you can say hey Google. I don't want to say Google.

I don't want to run around yelling brands in my house. I just watched a not good movie with the guy from Brum. Breaking Bad and James Franco. Oh, like the dad or something. Yeah, he's a dad and James Franco is the scary boyfriend of his daughter. And he has this like voice assistant throughout the whole home named Justine.

And as soon as it's always listening to everything. And as soon as you learn that in the movie, you're just terrified. Because every single conversation is being monitoring. Everything is a secret. I don't know. I feel like I'm not that, I'm not kind of one of

the paranoid people mostly, and I don't really worry about the companies doing stuff like this. But it is really scary if a company was doing it. When this story broke, I will just tell you that like several people in the verge of the Vox Media, San Francisco office won't name names, but several people are like,

told you so, why did anybody, why would anybody put one of these things in their house? This is, this told you, I told you, don't trust these companies. It just reified everybody's worst fears. Again, this is why I'm saying it's just dumb, right? Like, the problem is dumb, but the fear is real. In validating the real fear with a stupid problem is not the mistake Google should make.

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So here's the thing we noticed, just as we were prepping the show. Very quietly, Apple's in like a pretty intense hype cycle around AR. Was that a crack about how Tim Cook speaks? It's very soothing. I would have said very soothingly, Apple. It's not quite. It's just soothing. He speaks forcefully, confidently, but in a soothing way.

You're going to pay $1,000 for this phone. And you just do it. Show up one day and do it. Anyway, but I think it's a little under the radar, which is strange for an Apple hype cycle. So they're not out to tech publications. They're out to, like, Vogue. They went to Vogue and the independent in the UK.

Johnny I just gave a design interview to a Japanese magazine. They're out. Apple executives are out. They're not always out, right? So it's interesting that they're out. And what they're talking about is AR, which is interesting, because when the 8 came out during that launch event,

they actually kind of underplayed it. They know that the apps aren't there yet. There's a lot of cool demos, but the sort of broad market of AR killer apps is in sort of there. So they were like, we built it, it's here, it's going to be awesome. I think that I'm curious at how short a memory people have about Tim Cook going out and talking speculating. about exciting potential of technology.

Because the last time Tim Cook was on this kind of a hype cycle, it was about TV. Sure was. And that turned... No, it was about the watch. Okay, fine. Fair. Fair.

Whatever. But we've seen this pattern repeat twice. Right. And I don't know. They're doing a very good job of not overselling it. But it's also, I am curious as to... what Apple's actual end goal here is and what they're counter programming, because I kind of doubt they're that worried about Google hardware, for example.

I sincerely doubt that. I think they know that, well, maybe not they know, but I think they are aware that the iPhone 8 is just another iPad. And the rumblings about iPhone 10 supply, the last rumors, and it's just rumors, I'm just saying them, I don't know if they're true, is that it's hard to build the projector for the dot. So the supply issues around the 10 are still out there. So building a cycle around, hey, you can, all of these iPhones from the SC on up, can do AR.

And that's cool. That's something we're inventing. Yeah. And they're doing a good job of tempering expectations of what that AR is. They're hyping it, but also undercutting the hype a little bit, like in the same breath. So the headline that everyone is talking about it, this is mostly from Vogue, but I think it was the same thing in this independent story is Apple is not, doesn't believe that the technology. exists. I think the exact quote is, the technology itself doesn't exist

to do that in a quality way, referring to AR glasses. So when people are like, oh my God, augmented reality, Apple's being really clear that it is on a phone. But I love, sorry, I just, I'm trying to work my way towards quoting Tim Cook, and this most amazing quote he gave to Vogue. Yeah. And I've been trying to like preamble and make it natural.

But I'm just going to say it because I love it so much. It's something. We don't give a rats about being first. We want to be best in creating people's experiences you know, so they don't care about making the first air. It's a little Google swipe, but we don't give a rats about being first. Yeah.

It's not rats hyphen hyphen. No. You can say ass, Tim. You just can. Not to Vogue. Yes, you can. He's just like he's a polite guy. That's as emphatic as you've heard Tim Cook.

Yeah. I get it. I think it's interesting that the line is like the technology is not there for us to make these classes. because Apple invents technology. Right? Like it's a weird kind of construct for them. It's like we're not good enough at our jobs. Do you think him saying...

I don't think it's like that. It's just a weird... It's like we can't go to the store. We can go to fries and buy this thing. The technology doesn't exist to do that in a quality way. Because magically just had a little bit of a tiny little thing where they maybe... Their thing is like the size of a refrigerator. You have to mount a beer keg to your back and walk our...

around. People are trying to do it. Microsoft has HoloLens. Yep. Right? So these are all swipes at their competitors. Right. Who are making products that do this stuff.

And I guess what he's saying is like that's all garbage. So what he's saying is their technology is not quality. Yeah. But their whole thing is that they invent technology. It's just a weird formulation of that phrase. Right. What they, like another way to say it is like we look at the products in the market and none of them are doing it in a quality way. wink Johnny I was in the lab right now.

Yeah. Walking around in circles. That is the preamble to every great Apple keynote announcement. Right. So this was impossible to do. Nobody could do it. Yeah. But we did it.

But we actually, so it's just a weird construction. Yeah. And like it's an area you're talking, I'm sure it wasn't like, he wasn't like at the whiteboard being like, how do I say this exactly? But it's just, just tonally from Apple, like usually what they, they say nothing until they say everything. Right. And now he's out there. And the independent, he's like, we're going to, we're going to plant a lot of seeds. And they are.

It's going to be the next app store. And I would just point out that's probably, AR is great. It's probably more true than anything else they've done. But they also said that at about like the high message app store and the watch app store and the TV app store. Like their solution to things is like, it's an app store. And it's fine. But I don't know. It's just they're in this type cycle.

I just thought it was worth pointing out. out. I think another reason they could be in this hype cycle is because Oculus just had Oculus Connect, which is their big event. So they're counter programming the big VR push from Facebook. My standard Oculus disclosure, by the way, is doubly important because my wife is actually in one of the hype videos. That's great. FYI. Yeah. Yeah.

So. You want to go through it? Although there's a lot to go through. I really feel like... By the way, the disclosure is that Dieter's wife works for Oculus. She is routinely cast in videos. I feel like there's so much going on here. I still think that, okay, so I feel like the fundamental foundation for this Oculus event is, you know, Mark Zuckerberg gets on stage and without saying, I'm sorry VR hasn't succeeded yet.

Yeah. Says that for 15 minutes. And. And he at least apologize for the boneheaded. I'm going to put a cute cartoon character in the middle of Hurricane Ravitch, Puerto Rico. He did. He apologized to Facebook. But not at the event.

Okay. Yeah. On Facebook, he was like, sometimes we get, you know, like the standard corporate apology. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. Keep going. And so he kind of like, he listed a bunch of different ways.

One, VR can help paralyzed people by allowing them to visualize their legs and therefore build neural pathways to regaining motor function. That's awesome. VR can help businesses and help have remote workers and have meetings and stuff like that. VR can allow you to have these experiences. So you can, one of their announcements was you'll be able to do like watch live concerts and live, I think it's called venues or something like that. a lot to live concerts, live sports,

which I think is, you know, some of the best VR experiences are kind of passive, just watching entertainment with other people. So I think that's cool. VR will allow you have like this expanded virtual workspace.

So they're redoing their basic PC software to pull on a lot of your PC, which is one of the best experiences on the Rift, is something called big screen. And so the fact that they're building a whole interface for using your PC, within VR. It's kind of cool. By the way, speaking

to big screen, I'm just going to point out that they've set up the Oculus system, disclosure, et cetera, that if you, in the Oculus ecosystem, if you block somebody in any app in Oculus, it will block them across all Oculus Store apps. That's good.

That is really exciting to me. Because I actually, the best part of VR for me is the social experiences, Facebook's spaces thing. is an amazing experience. And everybody should try it. And the nice thing about it is even if you don't have VR,

you can watch your buddy, like, live stream on Facebook and like see into, you can watch somebody on a live stream. They're in VR. And then they're video chatting with somebody in the real world. And that integration, I've been excited about forever. And it is actually, is really great. But then there's, yeah, there's this desktop thing. And so the actual products that they announced,

is a $200 standalone headset that's basically a gear VR with the phone hardware built in using an LCD screen, by the way. Interesting. I can get some ghost in. Oculus Go.

And then they also teased again. How powerful is the go? Do we know yet? I'm assuming it's probably just like a medium-to-high-end Android phone. The only reason I'm asking is because it's an LCD, it's cheap.

Did they just, like, buy a bunch of gear VRs and a bunch of mid-range Android phones that, like, glue them together? The first phone that could run, like, that was announced with the gear VR was the S-6. Yeah. So, you know. Carmack always claimed that, like, OLED was the only thing

that was fast enough. Although this LCD screen is a quote-unquote, a quote-unquote, high-resolution fast-switch LCD screen. Huh. Anyway. So that's the thing. thing, though. That's the one to finally buy, in my opinion, right?

I don't know. There's still a divide between mobile VR and, like, desktop VR. Now we're going to have a try divide because the other thing that they're really high here, a trivide. A trivide, if you will. No, you shouldn't. No, no, take it back. So they talked about Santa Cruz,

which they had shown last year, which is their standalone headset that has actual motion tracking, inside out tracking. So you can, because the Oculus Go, like the Gear VR, is just like, you know, turning around 360 in space, which is not nearly as immersive or fun as being able to actually move around. So they have this inside out tracking, Santa Cruz headset. It will have these modified touch controllers that it will also track.

So you can have tether-free experience where you're moving around and you can use your hands. And those are some of the absolute best experiences. And I think that will be absolutely wonderful and great. But I feel like all three of these products... Wait, what's the third part of the Trivide? The Rift, which is PC-based. Okay, right. All three of these products, they're not converging, they're diverging.

Because some of my favorite things that do on the Rift, like Big Screen, and I'm very excited about this new, like, basic Rift software for the PC, is sort of integrating your PC experience. And that's something Zuckerberg talking about, having this virtual workspace. If you think about, like, working with other people, you want your VR headset to be kind of linked to your computer. So that's, like, one pathway where you have a PC-based experience, and your VR is augmenting your PC. Your VR is not just powered by your PC, but it's augmenting how you interact with your PC. I find that very interesting, very cool.

Then you have the middle way of Santa Cruz, which is going to be really good for entertainment. but that's it. It's not a PC. And then you have that mobile experience where it's good for very, very passive entertainment and really simple experiences. And they don't look like they're going towards each other at all. And also, you know, they have these new, like the redesigned Oculus home stuff. I think that's what they're calling it. Like you're basically your starting area is something now you can customize. which worked so well when Sony did it forever ago. It's like a little bit like second life. And that is a really fun thing. Because I become very anxious going into a social experience with strangers in VR. But the number one reason for me to have VR is to hang out with friends.

So being able to go to their customized space, that's wonderful. But those are different avatars and different experiences and different interactions than Facebook spaces. Yeah. Which is another thing. And so I just don't, like, I appreciate that they are throwing everything against the wall and seeing what sticks. And we're probably in that stage for VR. But I think we're just in like a, I think the most successful thing that we'll probably see in the next few years is like their B2B type stuff. Yeah, their video conferencing thing.

Yeah. If you think, I mean, think of like early days of PC. It's like something like you kind of get a custom computer with like a custom software for your specific business application. It's relatively easy to develop VR games and experiences, so they've done really good at that. So I can see a lot of custom, useful one-off experiences for businesses. Yeah. But you need way cheaper headsets for that, right? You got everybody in the conference room needs a headset.

That's like a big deal. Yeah. And so, yeah, do you do that with a bunch of Oculus goes, or do you do that with a bunch of Santa Cruz's but no PC access? Maybe, like, the captain of the meeting has a rift. and everybody else is in a Santa Cruz. From now, I will be known as the meeting captain. Anyways, I'm confused. I don't know where it's.

So the thing you're saying about big screen, I've noticed this as I've been using AR apps on the phone. AR apps interact with the world, right? They're augmenting actual reality. So putting things into space requires you to actually have that much space, which is like weird. It's a thing.

It's just you wouldn't consider it. Like, I don't play, it's like, yeah. I'm going to put a couch in here. Oh, couches are huge. Very big couch. Like, this is gigantic. But when you're fully in VR and you're like, I want to look at a big screen, you're in an infinitely sized virtual world. And it's actually those, to me, those use cases are diverging.

Right. You're physically in a small space, but you want to be in a big space. Right. You need to go all the way into VR. Right. And space is more about connecting you kind of with real world things like a 360 degree or something like that. But, oh, that's my other point. Rift is kind of low resolution to actually use a computer.

So while it's one of my favorite ways to use a computer, it really hurts your eyes after a while because it's really hard to read text in VR. So they also had to get more powerful on that end. I don't know what to do. What I really want is the return of VRML. Yeah. I think we need an open stand. Oh, God. The show is really taking a turn.

For creating virtual spaces. I can see our producer, he just started rubbing his eyes. He was just like, oh, go. All these virtual spaces, there's a lot of interesting stuff happening in them, but they're not connected. And I think that's one of the cool things about AR is that it's connected to one big shared reality that we're aware of, which is reality. Yeah. Built on an open standard. Built on an open standard by God.

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Oh, we got to talk about Windows phone. Hey. It's all over. It's kind of something. It's weird that they announce this with tweets. The number of things that have announced with tweets this week. Yeah. So Joe Balfiore, who's pretty well-respected, well-liked Windows executive.

of Windows Phone executive. He was on the team. We did a lot of interviews with Windows coming out. He took a break from Microsoft, back to Microsoft on the team. He had like a spirit journey. Yeah. He just somebody asked him on Windows Phone this week and on Twitter, he's like, yeah, it's over. Like, we'll do security updates and bug fixes, but... Building new hardware features slash hardware aren't the focused, sad face. Yeah. It's done. Just letting that go. He's like, we couldn't get the apps. But he just announced it all

just kind of like quietly on Twitter. He also just went in and admitted we tried very hard to incent, you know, get people to make apps, paid money, wrote apps for them. Yeah. We all knew this was happening, but the volume was just too low for most companies to invest. Another sad face. Yeah. I have a conspiracy theory. Yeah.

You want to hear it? Please. I think Microsoft is still going to make phone hardware. Yeah. I mean, it's no coincidence. Running. I am not. I am not assuming it.

Anything beyond the fact that Microsoft really enjoys making hardware, and I don't think they're going to not make phone hardware in the future. And I would just point out, Bel Fiore himself said he's using an Android phone. Bill Gates, the spirit leader of all Microsoft. What if, though? Recently admitted that he's using an Android phone. What if? Microsoft makes a lot of apps for Android now.

They made a new home screen app? They made a new home screen app. You can buy a Samsung Galaxy S8 Microsoft Edition. I agree with you. We're not saying. We're not saying. I'm just saying. We're not saying.

We're just saying. What if there's just a lot of puzzle pieces on the table? It had MS boot camp. You switch it. And you could buy a CD-ROM of iOS. And it ran both. That'd be incredible. I don't know if that's going to happen.

That would be the full reversal. of an industry story. There are so many ways it could go, though, if they did it. Yeah. Like, would they go the Amazon FireOS route and then get in another fight with Google because they lost the last one

when they fought over YouTube and Windows phone? Yeah. Or would they try and make it a full Google Play device and have Google apps competing? It's very, who knows? Hmm. Would they try and make an app store like the Amazon App Store?

Cortana and Alexa are best friends now. Maybe it'll run FireOS instead of Android. communicate well. I'm just, they don't communicate well, but that is, I hadn't thought about that. Yeah. Microsoft there's so many ways this could go. Yeah. One of the, when

Google announced that they're putting the search bar at the bottom of the pixel two, which I was really excited about. Dan showed me Microsoft's very nice Android launcher. Yeah. That has the swipe down for search feature. And you can even, you can change the search to Google search. Yeah. So it's very

useful. They're doing some good stuff for Android. Let's take a moment, though, and just recall Windows phone. What I personally would like to recall is our many reviews of Windows phones. Oh, my God. We were threatened with physical

harm because we were like, there are no apps here and this operating system doesn't work right. No, again, beautiful failure. Beautiful. That was like the headline of Vlad's story. Lots and lots of very good ideas. Unified messaging app.

Yeah. Very good idea. A home screen that wasn't just a grid of icons, but actually showed you information dynamically in a way that was easy to manage and looked good and wasn't garbage widgets that were designed four years ago for a version of Android that was four years old. Very good idea. So you're talking about HTC? Most Android widgets are hot garbage. I'm just telling you,

Almost every single Android widget you will try looks like a butt. What was if she sees Android's going to call it? A chrome metal butt. Oh, God. Blink feed? Blink came later. Now I'm forgetting. We're all talking about the mechanical alarm clock with a sun coming up behind the clouds up above it.

Yeah. Anyway, and the other thing that was great about Windows phone is more so than any sense, more so than any other operating system at the time, including iPhone, they built an OS that felt fast, fluid, and responsive in its core UI,

not necessarily in like full-on web rendering or whatever, but the core UI felt very, very fast and fluid, even on, like,

low-end, bare minimum hardware. Yeah. They architected a phone OS that in its core principles and ideas had a lot of, like,

morally righteous, just good things in it. Except it came too late. It was very tied to Bing. Nobody bought it. Yeah. And it failed. And they rebooted it like six times.

You remember when we had the scoop that Windows phone seven devices weren't going to get upgraded to eight? And everyone got real mad and then they're trying to be true. And then Windows 8 devices didn't get upgraded to 10. Literally my entire experience covering Windows phone has been people being mad at me. Yep. For just saying very obvious things. Like, the Libbya 1020 is a great phone with a cool camera, but it doesn't have an Instagram app. And they're like, use this weird third-party Instagram.

And it's like, that's not the answer. I feel anxious and panicked talking about Windows phone. There's a real... We just got railed in the comments. Every time. There's a part of me that really wants somebody to try again with... I feel like part of the promise of Windows phones, I definitely not spend a lot of time using Windows phones. But part of the promise was this company will design the UI.

Yeah. And app makers will deliver functionality that you can interact with through this common UI. Yep. And that's the Unix model. And I find it to be exceedingly beautiful. And it makes people theoretically into very powerful users because they can just chain interesting. And Unix can chain cool commands. like standard commands and then something custom

and do really powerful, interesting things and I feel like we're still very far from being that powerful on mobile. And I want that dream to rise again. It's real far away, man. Yeah. It's not happening. But I will say the UI ideas from Windows phone,

I would put them in two categories. One was basically giant fonts. Yeah. Like iOS 11 is giant fonts for days. Yep. And I think there's a lot of Windows phone snaking its way into iOS, at least from that sensibility. The other thing that I don't think anybody's picked up on, maybe a little bit in Android, is the idea that those home screen fragments were quick links into specific features of apps. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that was super cool. So you could program your home screen not with like app icons, but specific features, which was, I just thought, was. the smartest thing. Yeah, you're just starting, like, that's been in Android for a while, those app shortcuts, but they're just starting to see real support, and it's not really picking up that fast. We'll see what happens with Oreo once more than 15 people have Oreo, because it makes it way easier. But, I'll see. It's a little, there's a little iOS play some games.

It's definitely not the same. No. But I thought that was that bottle where everything is in an app, but it's just different little collections of features that you want to assemble into a, you know. I was neat. RIP Windows phone. It's all over for you. Do we?

Stephen E. Lupp. All right, Paul. Yeah. Do you know in the rundown I made this font really? I see. I don't want to forget. Every week. Every week.

You never forget. I never, except for it last week. Several weeks before that. All right. Every week I do a segment is called, You Know Dan, the Duckface is no longer cool. Wow.

It's a harsh segment to do every week. That was Ashley's harsh Dan Byrne today because we were talking about the Cassio TR mini, which is it's a compact, like it looks like a little circle makeup mirror type thing, but it's got a selfie cam in it. And so on the base is an LCD so you can kind of frame your shot. And in the middle or in the top part, there's a ring of LED. and it actually does it does

portrait lighting like Apple but with real LEDs so you can actually get different You can buy a phone case like the Kim Kardashian iPhone case

that has real LEDs around the front but this one you can have different modes so different ones are on or off so you can get different lighting looks right

it's not just about having one Is there a spooky one where it relates from the bottom? Hopefully hopefully there's a big one anyways looks really cool it's got a 21 millimeter

wide angle perspective, which seems weird for a selfie cam, but I guess that's what's cool. I don't know. Ashley's really excited about it, so I'm excited about it. I don't like taking selfies, but this looks like the coolest. I like one-off gadgets that are for a very specific purpose, and this is definitely the most selfie-specific camera I've seen in a while, and it's $500. There you go.

That's the news. They also have a $900 one, which I don't know how it works. The TR80, I guess. That is nuts. Yeah. Does it just make phone calls on the side? I don't think it's a phone. Okay.

I think it's just a selfie camera and it connects with Bluetooth to your phone to get the- I think the main thing is taking pictures of yourself is like gone from being a thing you do on the side of your phone to a thing that you want to do. Yeah. And now there's hardware products that are built to optimize for that. Like if someone came out with, like if Red came out with the 8K selfie camera, It would have some insane name, like the Dred Dragon. The Dragon Within. The dragon within.

You know what it would be? It'd be like a little dragon. They'd call it a Wyvern. Ooh. That's good. It's a deep Dragon Warrior reference. That's, does that game on any of the little Nintendo's? Dragons?

Dragon Warrior. Oh, dragons. One of my favorite games. I have lots of memories of Dragon Warrior. Yeah. Is that like Dynasty Warrior? No, it was Dragon Warrior 3, I think, was the... They were Wiverins.

You killed the hell out of Wiverins. Dragon Warrior. It's a good game. Are you a dragon? Or do you fight dragons? You're a dragon warrior. I think you are a dragon. And there's lots of blue blobs everywhere.

There's blue blobs. You've got to kill slime. But you're talking about Dragon Quest. No, Dragon Warrior. Riving radio here. This should be a video show. The reason there's somewhat silence here is I'm just mad at Nilai for not actually playing Real Dungeons and Dragons.

publish this dragon warrior in North America. Yeah. Ah. Huh. Well, who knew? Anyway, one more thing. Yeah. I just want to bring it up real fast.

I guess I'm from Japan. Oh, man. There's finally a waterproof Kindle. That's it. Oh. It did it. It took forever. So I knew Lauren.

It cost $250. Yeah. I knew Lauren Good was going to meet with Amazon. I didn't know what. I didn't know what the meeting was. And I told her, I don't care what it's about. I don't care who you're meeting with. I don't care what they have to show you.

You need to walk into that room with a bottle of water and pour it on whatever they show you. If it's a pad of paper or are they like giving you notes, if it's a new fire TV, if it's a tablet, I don't care. Just pour water on it because it is absurd that there's not a waterproof Kindle. And it was waterproof Kindle, so everything worked out.

I have a theory about this. You know how when music services started coming out and that the Beatles were these big holdouts? Yeah. And it took them like a decade to come around. I feel like that decade, there's a lost generation of people who don't care about the Beatles because they couldn't listen to the Beatles. Yeah. I think we might be in that situation with people taking baths.

You got a generation of people who couldn't take baths. Yeah, because you can bring your phone or you kindle into the bath. Yeah. Yeah. It's very dangerous to do so. Yeah. And what are you going to buy a paperbook just for baths? You ever watched, like, there's movies of, like, old-timey writers.

They'd, like, be in their clawfoot tub, and they'd have, like, a tray and they'd have a typewriter. Yeah. Wait, so are you suggesting now, because phones are waterproof and there's a waterproof kindle, baths will experience a resurgence? Or possibly that you, they waited too long, and baths have already died. Bath are upstairs. And they will be hard to revive the bath. But we'll hope. We'll be tracking this story closely on the,

I literally thought when I saw this like, oh, I could take baths. Do you ever walk into a hotel room? Paul was finally taking a bath. You're walking to a hotel room and you're not really a bath guy, but it's a stand-up shower instead of a bathtub and you have a little bit of a discipline. Like, oh, well, I guess I don't have that option. Not that you would ever do it, but if you really wanted to. First, let's just, let's just, let's, okay, first, baths are gross.

So you're just in a tub of dirty water. Going to a hotel and being like, hmm, this standing pool of water is something I'd... What? Haven't you ever been sick while traveling and just need to take a hot bath? Because you travel and got sick? Or, you know, the trick in Vegas, you fill up the bathtub with water so that evaporates into your hotel room. Oh, yeah. That's a real move.

You should do that. It's how I managed not to get sick at CES two years running. Just everything about the concept of the hotel bathroom grosses me. I want as little to do with that space as I can. I love when there's still phones in the hotel bathroom. Oh, yeah, like corded phones. Like, what? Who is spending that much time?

Anyway, so Kindle's out. It's waterproof. We can take baths again. Get right in the bath. It's bigger than the current Kindle oasis. A little bit. The pages apparently turned faster. They integrated the battery instead of having in the face.

The lighting is more even. It's aluminum on the back. I just don't know why they didn't make the $80 candle waterproof, which they certainly can do. I don't know. But I guess the only upgrade anybody wants is waterproofing, so they're just going to upsell you. You know, just stand in the whole foods with a bottle of water, pouring it over a Kindle all day long. Whatever.

Who am I kidding? I'm going to buy one. Anyway, that's the Vergecast. It happened. Isn't that it? Yeah. I mean, there's other stuff. You only talk about Qualcomm smartphone patents?

No. It was a quiet week. Mostly we made shows. We did make a lot of shows. Well, you made a lot of shows. But you were there. I was there, too. I got to tell you, Circuit Breaker next week.

We did a little T-C. of it this week what's happening next week but it's going to be ridiculous one of the products on the circuit breaker show next week is literally taller than actually it's going to be amazing it also has a built-in reggae tunnel i'm going to crash the show you should teeter's going to be on the show yeah this is being great so tune in sugarbreaker that's four live on twitter replays on wednesday show wednesday nights after mr robot and next week why'd you push that button's coming out we'll probably stick an episode of that in this feed so if you see it don't be surprised. In fact, what you should do is listen to it and then go subscribe.

Definitely subscribe. All right. You can tweet at us. I'm at Reckless. Deeter's at Backlon. Paul's at Future Paul. You can leave us a review on iTunes. Click those five stars. Tell everyone you love us. You can email us at the email address of your choice. I recommend a Casey. at the verge.com. Casey is the only Casey Newton podcast in this world. It's coming. Find us on G-talk. Open G-chat and just see what happens on your phone. Why can't I remember the name? You just can't get it right

Because they ruin their brandy. Anyway, that was very fast. GALO. Thank you for listening. Rock and roll. Paul. Promocode. Oh, yeah.

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