The Vergecast - Oh gadget, my gadget

Episode Date: June 24, 2016

This week on Vergecast, Paul Miller and Ashley Carman, part of our Circuit Breaker team, join Nilay and Dieter to discuss trends they've noticed while blogging. Also, fan favorite Nicola Fumo stops by the show to tell us what she's been up to and explains her recent tech troubles. This wouldn't be a tech podcast without us discussing the iPhone headphone jack rumors so get ready for that too! 01:46 - Gadgets with Paul and Ashley 08:20 - Headphone jack debate 21:53 - Coors ad 22:57 - Nicola Fumo guest 38:06 - Mr Robot ad 40:45 - Gadget Bonanza 47:09 - lightning round Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dieter, I'm going to need a lot of hell today, man. Didda-da-d-da-d-da-d-da-d-da-d-d-da. Hello, welcome to the Vergecast, a chaotic flagship podcast from Theverge.com. I am Mila Patel, proprietor of a vodka brand called Cesar Vodka. Cut through the night. I'm joined here by an incredible panel of experts, personalities, talents, bon vivant, Paul Miller's here. You're just making such intense eye contact with me right now.

I can't handle it. I don't think that I've ever told you how much I love you. Ashley Carmen is here. Hello. It's my first verge cast. Do you want to do intense eye contact? We can like do intense eye contact. Soon.

Not now, but soon. Dieter, I'm staring at a monitor with fire in my eyes. Deeter is in San Francisco, with Deeter's here. Yeah, once upon a time we were we were going to make this show about a phone call, but I see that is that has gone by the wayside. There's only one gimmick that we can persist with and it is my fake vodka brand, Sizer Vodka. If anyone would like to invest in my fake vodka brand, I'm willing to take your money. Can I say this to the listener? Our trademark attorneys are on the case. I'm going to make this happening. Oh yeah. You know,

there's a drink called the Scissor. It's a rum. drink. That shit's going down. I don't know if you've had Fox Media's legal team, but they're coming for you. So we've got a pack show. I'll just say this right now. A little bit later on the show. Our girl, Nicola Fumo will be on the show. What? To tell us a story

of adventure and daring. But first, there's a reason that Paul and Ashley are here. Important reason. Paul and Ashley, the listeners may know, run Circuit Breaker. Our gadget experience. And on Monday, Paul and Ashley and I took a field trip to Best Buy. Not Monday.

Was that, God, such a long time. What day was it? That was Monday. Paul and I had been a spiritual Best Buy for five to six years. I'd be really surprised if that was Monday. This is how this entire episode of the show is going to go. What are some verifiable facts that we refuse to verify? Anyway, earlier this week, the gadget bloggers and I.

Yeah. We wandered around those. We did some IRL gadget blogger. We got recognized. That was wild. We learned that we all type weird shit when we see keyboards. Neelite. tell is the best.

What else you can type? You should start typing that. I'm going to try that. Let me see how that feels real quick on a MacBook Pro. Feels great. Was anybody a quick brown fox kind of person? We had a lot of quick brown fox

in the comments. If you're listening to this and you didn't see that post, I'm dying to know when you see a keyboard and you walk up to it and you just start typing to like play with it, what is the thing that you type? Because I think it's very revealing. I'm a traditional.

What do you type? Quick Brown Fox jumped over the lazy dog. Addie types, what's you type? Addie types a neuromancer quote, which is amazing. She said that for so, she wrote so many gadget posts, like back in the day that she said for a while she just started making up mid-range androids posts. She'd be like, this has a snap dragon processor and a four-inch screen. That's what we did to Addie.

That's how much we ruined her brain. Paul, what was yours? Hello, my name is Paul. Ashley, it was yours. A lot of people identify themselves. Yeah. You got to type your, typing your name is the thing. The other thing I realize is not a lot of capitalization.

Yeah. Which is a failure on my part because holding shift while also typing is actually assessing a quality of a keyboard. Is it? I don't know. Ashley, what do you type? Yeah. That's true. Ashley addresses his device personally.

Hello, it's me. All right, see, this is Circuitbreaker Crew. What's up with gadgets? How's life? How's things? It's an audio show. You can't just shrug at me nonchalantly. The state of gadgets, by the way, somewhat pleased, content, nonchalant shrug.

Yeah, it's a lot of Kickstarter. And I knew that going in, but it's a lot of Kickstarter. It's Kickstarter and mid-tier Android from China. Yeah, China loves making new phones. You know who doesn't like releasing new phones? The flagship brands. They only do, like, a couple a year. Yeah.

Boring. I need quantity. In China supplies. There was a time, though, when HC, like every other week, that was the carrier exclusive time. When every other week for us to make, you know what, HEC?

And they're all slight rebrand. They're all the same phone. And they all did the thing where one phone would have the spec that you want and another phone would have a spec that you want, but they never had all the specs that you want. Like this phone has a big screen, but a shitty processor.

This phone will remind you to call your mother. What do you guys think about the one plus? three. So I have an art gallery. Soho. You have to pay to plug your shit on this show. Walking past this So I get off the train in Soho, right? Prince Stop. And you walk past the Apple store. 13 steps. Right? Yeah.

Then you walk past this store that has over Christmas was Samsung's store. And now, right now it's a pop-up shop for Magnum. cream. Like those ice cream bars? Which one of those was more popular? I see a lot of people in the Magnum store. But... Can we talk about... For the one...

What? Magnum ice cream? Yeah, it's an ice cream bar. Magnum refers to a size of condom or if you're classy like the thing that you put champagne in, right? Isn't that called a magnum? It's also a gun.

But which of those three things is the ice cream is calling ice cream Magnum supposed to connote to you. It's very confusing. I'm deeply confused. It's deadly. Oh, God. And it's luxurious.

It's very luxurious. Just putting that out there. I like living in a world where Magnum can better afford to pay rent on a Soho pop-up shop than Samsung. Yeah. But for one night only, one plus three. Yeah. Was in the pop-up shop. But all the Magnum stuff was still there.

And there was a line around the corner. Yeah. Dude, this is a cult phenomenon on phone. People are really into it. I'm into it. Dan really liked it. I will say that people ought to be into it. I mean, Dan's review is great, but, like, the idea that, like, they just said, you know what?

We're just going to make a great phone. And they've been saying that for a while, but they didn't really execute on it last year or with the last go-round. But this one, like, there's just not really a whole lot of knocks on it. It's just solid, straightforward, good. Can I say that I love the name? like it took this many years for me to understand the name. It was an incredibly good joke that will pay off forever. The one plus one plus one was like this stupid name.

One plus two is like, I get it. One plus three is like, I see where you're going. You're going to put out the one plus 17 and people are like, that's fucking hilarious. You just stayed committed to this one joke. Edition. You named your company after addition. And you are constantly adding one more.

unit of value to everything that you make. No. Because they can't name anything but a number. Right. Like if they put out, like, I don't know. You couldn't say one plus multiplication. That doesn't make any sense. I don't know.

What's a dumb phone name? Like, they couldn't put out the one plus galaxy. They could do string concatenation, which is traditionally done with the plus operator in most programming languages. So, you know. Yeah, really widen out that audience. One plus dog. And so you got one dog.

What? You know, put up a one plus dog. Yeah, one plus dog. Yeah. All right. This joke is, again, not quite as good as the actual joke that is the name of the phone. But it's great. And Dan reviewed it.

Actually, one of my favorite reviews that we've ever done on the site, because the CEO of the company was sort of a character in the review talking about the phone. And they did it. And I'm just going to go right into this. I think this year is going to be the year when, buying a new flagship phone or high-end phone gets really interesting because I suspect. I can see Dieter's face. He knows where I'm going. I'm so excited for you to get started on this.

People aren't going to buy the fucking iPhone. They're not going to do it. They're not going to do it. The iPhone's going to come out. The rumor in the Wall Street Journalist's week was it's going to look exactly like the current phone, maybe a little bit thinner. It's not going to have a phone jack.

Aren't they going to move the antenna lines? No, Johnny Ava probably like, you know what I love is antenna lines. The whole back of the phone is the antenna lines. No, the renders have them move to the top. That's what I'm saying. This is the least attractive phone Apple has ever made. Yeah.

And they're going to go a third year with this design. You know, when we were at Best Buy, picked up the iPhone 5SE. Yeah. Beautiful phone. Yeah. Miss it. I think I'm going to go back.

Speaking of plugs, my lightning jack on my iPhone 6. I don't have the 6th, I stopped working. I was like, oh, shoot. I already cracked my screen. Apple's not going to fix this. They don't fix anything. Yeah.

And I was like, man, maybe Neelai's right about being a hater. But then I, like, wadded up, like, a Post-it note, and I stuck it in the jack and just, like, moved it around and got some of the dirt out. Yeah. And then I... Where are you keeping this phone? I'm not dirty.

Yeah. Wow. And it started charging again. That's... I was going to say Paul goes, he's eating ice cream at the Magnum store at night. That's right. That's right. I'm just like covered in luxury.

Derryish, deadly ice cream. And I'm one of those people who talks into my phone, like I hold it up to my face, like a microphone. You're one of those? No. No. But that would be a good way for the ice cream to get in, right? That'd be a good narrative.

Yeah. Paul's sloppily eating ice cream while making a phone call in New York City Street while walking to his art gallery. Here's the thing. I mean, that's the beginning of a rom-com. So that's what that is. So the music is playing and Paul's buying the ice cream and he's like on a busy phone call. He's like, I got to get to the gallery.

and like he walks into the girl and the ice cream goes everywhere and it's in the phone and then for the rest of the movie the business is Paul is constantly trying to get his phone to work but at the end of the movie he's trying to call the girl

and the phone's dead do I get the girl well you gotta wad up the post it including it okay okay as long as it but my headphones don't have like a microphone so actually if I am on a phone call I do actually hold the phone like that sometimes but if

there was no headphone jack then my headphones would be plugged straight into the phone, that port wouldn't be exposed to the dripping ice cream. This is by far the worst argument that I've heard thus far. But I will say the worst argument that I've heard thus far, the only argument I've heard that actually articulates a benefit for lightning headphones. Because no one's told me what the benefits of it. Actually, what do you think about getting rid of the headphone jack?

I want to hear the benefit, I think. That's it. Ice cream protection. You're not going to spill luxurious ice cream. I'm very much on, like, team don't get rid of the headphone jack, but I guess I'll try to play devil's advocate a little bit here. The primary benefit is supposed to be that it's a stupid jack, it takes up a ton of space inside the phone that can be used for something else,

like making it thinner or replacing it with more battery or something else. And the next piece is that, look, progress is hard. It's always painful, and there is better technology than a 3.5 millimeter headset jack and wired headphones, whether it's wireless earbuds or it's wired lightning headphones that give you better sound quality or something else that we haven't heard of before. And so, like, the analogy keeps getting drawn. I'm like failing at making the pro case, but the analogy is supposed to be between the 3.5 millimeter or the 3.5 floppy, the floppy disc. and this headset check that like, look, eventually old stuff needs to go away, do you replace with new stuff,

and that's painful, but Apple is forward-thinking, and they're not going to stick around keeping to use the same ports forever because that way lies in madness. You end up with scuzzy ports on modern laptops, and that's ridiculous. So you've got to move forward.

Those are the ones I've heard over and over again are floppy, disc drive, the obstacle drive, and VGA ports. And cereal. Yeah. I mean, honestly, that kind of makes sense to me now. That argument, because how many pairs of headphones do you go through? Like the earbuds.

A lot. So why are we clinging on to them? They suck. How many times do you take your headphones out of your phone and plug you into your laptop? Every day. Yeah. Sorry. You're screwed by some more headphones.

Or some dongles. Dongles. Fucking word. Well, here, let me just lay this out. So the rumor is, and the Wall Street Journal, they're not really rumors when the Wall Street Journal reports them. We all know this. It's a dirty secret of our industry.

Someone in Apple leaked to the Wall Street Journal. Next year's phone is going to be not a big deal. 2017 is the 10-year anniversary of the iPhone. That's the big deal. That's the one you want. This year, moderate change, a little bit thinner. We're going to get rid of the headphone jack. I think the point of that was to set expectations about the not big hardware design.

That's fine. But I think the more important story is Apple's moving away from this connector that literally the entire universe of audio is centered around. I have not heard a reason beyond it's old for getting rid of it. And I have not heard a reason beyond Apple hates old things for why Apple would want to get rid of it, except for what Dieter's saying, which is this thing about thinner battery life. But the dominant narrative of the iPhone for the past year has been, why do you keep making it thinner? We would accept a thicker iPhone if it would last for 24 hours. Right. The battery life would be nice.

I think the middle ground here is a deal-making mindset where it's like, okay, Apple, you can do it if you switch to USBC. Yeah. Because at least then you'd have the same headphones that would work on Android, on your laptop, and on your computer. There's no lightning plug on your computer either. A lot of dongles would be incoming. Well, John Gruber speculated that maybe that's why we haven't seen the MacBook Pro yet, is that they're going to put a lightning. connector on the MacBook, which will just be deeply confusing to me, because it

uses USBC on the new MacBook, the retina MacBook, the last two iterations of it. Will they use Lightning for charging? Will it just be there for headphones? It's like I have no idea. So I wrote this piece. Everyone's mad at me about it. I wrote it so people get mad at me about it and talk about it, right?

That's why you write things. It's not actually... I think there's a lot of people on your side. There's a lot of people on my side. There's a lot of people on the sort of pro-apple... That's my knee jerk. And those but those people have a point. Apple is historically very good at saying, fuck this old thing.

Exactly. Here's the new thing. Where they have been good at it, and I think this is, Dieter, I think you agree with me in this. The comparison to the floppy drive is wrong. Because when they got rid of the floppy drive, they got rid of it on one model, on the IMAC.

In 1998, they kept selling computers of floppy drives for other customers for years, until 2001, actually. And the thing that replaced it, the floppy drive was really obvious. It was CDs and the internet. And the best selling accessory for that IMAC for years was USB floppy drives. That was what people bought.

You bought an IMac. And Best Buy or you could buy them at Sears. My sister bought an IMac at Sears. It was a true story. They would sell you the bundle. The IMAQ care kit. It was like a polishing cloth, like whatever garbage. A CD cleaner, you know, like the garbage they used to sell you.

And it was just a bunch of high margin shit around a floppy drive that they would sell you. That's why. because people still needed it. But eventually, you didn't need any more. You could unplug it in, like, throw in the closet. The CD drive, obviously the internet was going to take over, music was going to take over. They built iTunes. They still made computers with CD drives until, like, four years ago.

This just happened. All these other ports, they wrapped in the USB. USB got faster and faster, faster. We knew it was going away. Eventually they went away. But they didn't stop making the ports. They didn't stop making the adapters. Here, they're just, there's nothing else.

There's no next thing. Everyone's going to tell me how Bluetooth, but Bluetooth isn't as good, right? It's like crackly, you need a battery. Yeah, Bluetooth is not. It's not there yet. Maybe Bluetooth 5 will be way better. Maybe. I mean, maybe Apple goes all in and creates their own wireless standard for audio.

That's terrifying. That's like the worst outcome. But I think Apple is betting over and over and over and people will just buy the next iPhone. They'll just do it out of habit. Right. And they've got all the carrier programs. You sign up and you get a new iPhone every year. They have their own programming sign up and get a new iPhone every year.

And you think this could be... But their problem is their sales are down. Right. You think this could be, what? I don't know. I think if you have this iPhone or a 6 and you see the new iPhone, and it's going to cost you some amount of money, and you're like, what's new about it?

And the answer is, it's a little bit faster and it has a better camera, and your headphones don't work. You're going to say, screw it. I'll buy it. But we're professionally, that's whatever. I'm living with the iPhone 6 with the, would you buy, Ashley? No. Because of the headphone jack.

Yeah, because I don't charge things. So if I had to have Bluetooth headphones first of all It just wouldn't happen I just like I have my headphones with me everywhere They're just easy They're replaceable super and they're cheap If you are in a major pinch Just imagine this

Just be in my mind for a while These are the scenarios I like to imagine You're just you, you're living your life Suddenly you get invited on a boat ride You're like ah this is a great I love boat rides And you're on a boat and it's got like a shitty old steer And you're like this boat ride could use some tunes

I'm going to plug right in. But then you look at your phone. Good thing. I brought my dongles. It's going to ruin boat rides forever, is what I'm saying. With my laptop, I accept the dongle life because, like, if you've got a laptop, you're carrying around a bag to put the laptop in. And so if I, like, you know, it sucks. I've only got one USBC port on this Mac, but I've got a bag and I can put some stuff in the bag and I can grab the dongle that I need and life goes on.

But with a phone, I am not carrying around. a bunch of dongles. Not going to happen. So somebody in our comments, there were over 700 comments, right now, over 800 comments on my post. Some of my comments pointed out,

Deeter, that your dongle life, even though I posted a somewhat mocking photo of Deeter at the WWC Live blog with like 90 dongles, he's like, that is actually the right solution. Right?

You have this whole bundle of shit, like all ready to go. You pull out your laptop, you plug in one thing, and you're ready to go. And you're not plugging 90 things in the laptop. Yeah. Well, where do you keep your headphones?

My pocket. Right? So what if the dongle was already connected to your headphones? Why don't we've been down this road? It's just a tiny little dog. The HTCG1 had this problem. Every Sony Erickson fell out on this problem. None of those phones changed the world. It's not great. No one's using Sony smart plug. I'm saying if you're at the boat, you already got a dongle.

Why? Until you lose it. How often do you lose headphones? I lose headphones probably once every two months. I'm going to buy another dongle. Maybe Apple can offer a subscription, like a dongle subscription. So we were in the Best Buy and we're like walking in, we're like, looking around. I will say the Samsung area the Best Buy, far more hopping and lively than the Apple area. The Apple area was like being in a museum.

It was very quiet, everyone was very proper. I was afraid to touch everything. And the Samsung area is like, try out, these VR headsets. Like, bah. So we get to the little accessory aisle. I'm like, wow, this is kind of sad. And Paul's like, I've given so much money to this aisle.

Yes. Like, just everything. Everything costs $29 at a minimum. Yeah. You need, you loot, like, MacBook adapters. You know how hard is to lose an appellate? I think Apple thinks $1. $29.

That's their base unit of currency. Has anybody done the math? Like, I think everything's a multiple of $29. Base 29. Yeah, base 29. Base 10. That's it. That's actually the curve of the original IMAC is a base 29 curve.

Maybe the dongles will be 29 cents. This is a garbage, stupid idea. I'm just saying it. I know that, look. I have waged a one-man war against IRBlasters for a decade. And you, like, cried every day for a month when they killed Firewire. Yeah. Paul and I've known each other for a long time.

But I feel like there's, I just, and it feels stupid and fanboish of me to say, but I do feel like we kind of take a step forward as a technology industry every time Apple kills a connector. But they usually do it in favor of standard. But here's the thing, like, I got to say that we take a step forward, and Apple killing the floppy in particular was great. It was the right move. The floppy was a bad technology, and we could see precisely and clearly what was next.

And with headphones, I don't see precisely and clearly what the replacement technology is that is significantly better that makes it worth the cost of bailing on a standard. Because the fear is that Apple comes forward with something that is non-standard and non-compatible with its own products, much less everything else that's on the planet. And that's like, I don't see the value.

They do own a massive headphones company. I was going to say, where does beats come into this? Well, they're going to keep selling you overpriced headphones. Founded during the gold rush, it was home to miners who spent 12 hours a day in the frozen ground digging for gold. But that land was rich in another resource, the rocky mountain water that runs cold and clear. One man knew the value of that water. that man was Mr. Coors. Really, just drink the Coors.

I don't know if any of this is true, but just buy some fucking Coors and drink it. In 1873, Mr. Coors settled in Golden to brew the finest beer that town had ever tasted. Again, they spent 12 hours a day in the frozen ground, so assuming all the beer was good and Mr. Coors is fictional, but just buy the beer. Anyway, the miners are grateful because when they sat down for a well-deserved banquet, Mr. Coors brought a beer worthy of the occasion. A beer that came to be known as the banquet beer. Coors, the banquet beer. Coors Library and Company, Golden Colorado. With great beer comes great responsibility.

If anyone wants a fact check that, I don't open to it. I'm at Wreckless on Twitter. But just by Coors. Drink it. Drink it, well, I mean, we're drinking it. We're not actually drinking it. We pretend we are. All right, we're back.

Paul, I don't know if you heard this. Paul verified, Mr. Coors, real man. Made a good beer. I hope that someone, actually, I was won as a joke to be for Halloween. Michael Coors, like Michael Coors. But I realized many, many seasons ago

that it's too high concept and it'll never work. So in case you haven't noticed, Nicola's here. Hi, Nicola. Hi, Nickla. We've missed you. I've missed you.

Yeah, we've missed you, the listeners have missed you. I'm glad that one flippant tweet brought you back to us today. It was good. I was just waiting for the moment. I mean. Yeah.

We had to cool off. Yeah. Right? Towards the end of your Vergecast run. You have to starve them out and then fan them up. All right. So Nicola, here's what we're going to be doing with Nicola. She's going to be doing some audio-based reporting for us, we hope, in the future. But really, I want Nicola to come back to the Vergecast every so often and just tell us tale. Yeah, yeah, we can do that. Fumo Adventures. Adventures in technology, and culture, and style and experiences. The big problem in my life right now is that I need to replace my MacBook Pro. which is from 2011. Do you have a pro or an error?

Pro. Okay. 2011, my last year of college, my other one broke and I had to get this one. Now it's just really slow and it's clunky and I'm living my, you know, breezy lifestyle. So I just want to grab a computer and go. So I have bought and returned two laptops, Mac laptops,

since leaving this job where I had a provided computer. So the first I bought the gold Macbook and the guy selling it to me was like, why don't you want Rosegold? And I was like, you don't even know what you're opening up with me right now. Wow. I didn't say that, but I was like, if he knew, this might trigger work. He tried to push the Rosegold on here. He was just like, why not go over for it?

And I was like, mm, mm, wasn't happy. So I bought the less expensive one. It's $12.99, but after New York tax, it was like over $1,400. Yeah. which is like so much money, okay? And I got it, and it was slow. Like, I would open it up and it would, you know, when you type in your password, you'd be typing

and it doesn't register, and it's like, well, my 2011 laptop does this too. Like, it needs like a warm up period. And all the time, like, all I do is look at Google Docs and email, and, like, I don't do anything. You live in a web browser. I don't do anything, like, heavy, right? And it would have, like, little spinning guy,

and I'm like, are you from kidding you? Do. Safari. Oh, man. Oh, man. I hadn't committed to it, so I didn't want to, like, install all my faves. But it was just horrible. And that sucked because it was so cute.

But I took it back. You should have gotten that rose gold. Then it would have been fast and good. Damn it. I took it back. Yeah. And it was fine. Oh, and then.

I'll tell that later. Okay, I took it back. It was fine. They returned my money. And then I was like, all right, I'm going to buy this. It's the other ones. So I got the 11-inch MacBook Air, which is old. Like, it has been out since when?

Like 2010. Yeah. Yeah. And I got it home. I got home with it, and I was like, oh, old friend. It felt so familiar and, like, good. And, like, I felt like I could just throw it on the couch and I didn't care. The 11-inch Macquick Pro, there were many, many, like, ultra notebooks in the world.

There were, like, luxurious business class notebook. Like, that's the computer you buy when you can afford a slower, small computer to use in business class. That was the original, I'm so bougie, I have a shitty computer for the air. That's the 11-inch MacBook error. Well, it felt familiar and good, but I knew from the moment I bought it. Yeah, I knew from the moment that I took it home, I was like, I can't keep this. This isn't an intelligent, this isn't a good long-term purchase. No. Right now, so. That computer is on its deathbed. Yeah, so after however

many, a week or something, I took it back again. And fun fact, Applesaure can't return to debit. What? They had, right? But even though the first person returned to debit, the second person was like, oh, no, no, we can't do that. And I was like, okay, so you can either take $1,200 cash. And I was like, no. Or we can return to a gift card, and maybe from the gift card we can return to your debit card.

And I was like, well, let's hope so. Wait, why wouldn't you take the $1,000 in cash? Because what am I going to do with that? Go to the bank and put it in bank again. I don't have a bank. It's digital. Oh, I see. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I'm an old guy.

I participate in our banking institutions. Yeah, my bank is, isn't, doesn't have any ground locations. Oh, you're cashless. Cash free, baby. Can you, maybe, do you ask me to turn to Bitcoin? Can you just put this in my Venmo or something? Oh, my God. I had to invite my mom to Venmo.

Really? Yeah, because my dedicated Twitter followers will remember when I got kicked off the family plan and then I joined my mom, a different family member. We created a family plan together. Bye, dad. But my mom's making me pay for it, catch. So I was like, okay, well, how am I going to? Oh, other fun fact, Verizon, you can't pay, you can't auto pay with two credit cards.

So it all comes out of her account, and then I need to reimburse her somehow. So I invited her to vetmo. Hey, Dieter, did I tell you something? I didn't tell you this during WWDC, because I knew that you, you know, it's like a live blog is real stressful on Apple events, even more stressful. So at WWC, you know, Wi-Fi's pretty bad. Our little hotspots pretty bad. I'm like, I'm going to tether to my phone because that always works.

My phone tethering didn't work at all. It was broken. Totally broken. There was like a minute at WWC where I had no connectivity and I was like, couldn't figure it out. I was like fucking with my phone. I figured out what it was. What?

AT&T called my parents because I pay their family plan for them, convince them to combine all their billing together with their, Right? If you're listening to show, you know, they combine the, they're like... Didn't they try to make a smart home out of your family home? They sent them a bunch of like U-versed shit and like smart home stuff. And they said, this will be cheaper. You get a smart home and you get unlimited data because we see the one account uses so much data. Guess what they turn off when they turn on the limited data?

Oh, no, they turn off tethering. So I was sitting at WNBC ready to make my one fucking power move, which is I plug in the phone and it all lights up and works. phone is dead. And I look at Deeter and I was like, do I tell Deeter this right now that I'm dead? And I was like, Deeter's like holding the camera, he's taking photos, he's like fucking with 90 dongles. So it's like, Dieter's fine. I read the live blog.

Yeah. And I watched the stream, which is the first time I've ever watched that. Yeah. I was like, oh, this is just like fashion week, but just one one. Yeah. What did you think of their presenters? They made a big push towards all these like diverse presenters. Oh, man.

I mean, it felt like. I felt a little, like, calculated, like a little cheesy. But also, like, what are you going to do? You can't. Yeah, you can't not. There's no, like, nat. I don't know. You have to make a choice, right?

Here's the choice we're making. Here it is. And over time, it'll feel natural. Yeah. I appreciate that, actually. The mini mouse bit was like a little maddening. Like, oh, I don't know, I got a mini mouse. Thank God for a mini mouse.

I was just like, come on. Yeah. Get out of here. But I thought it was really funny that every gentleman that presented was wearing, like, dark denim, somewhat stiff jeans, and like a leather belt, and then all varying versions of blue shirts. Yeah. Like, no one repeated a blue, but all blue. Okay. And then there was like a bunch of women and they were all, like, dressed in the lines. Yeah, they were just, well, the one, the Minnie Mouse woman was just, like, kind of at leisure, like office appropriate

atleisure. And then the music woman was just like, I'm fun. Yeah. She's awesome. She, She came to Apple, I think, through the Beets acquisition. She's actually a VP of that Beets organization. She's like the real deal. Everyone calls her Bose, but she's got a full name. Bozeman St. John is her full name. She's amazing. So any takeaways from this?

Were you like, the watch is better now? Oh, man. Well, I message is going to be a mess. Like, the thing about this I message thing is that it's going to really reveal the people who fucking suck to text. Because some people, you're going to be. I don't even want your reply because it's going to be like nonstop drama on your phone. The balloons are shooting and it's vibrating and it goes away and there's stickers everywhere. Like it's going to be it's going to be something.

And I think people will crave the simplicity of like, can I just send a text only message? My friends hate me because I love Bitmoji. Ah, yes. Because there's always one of those. You are the worst. Well, I do it. Sorry, Jeremy, blown the fuck up on a verge of her chest. with this.

Jeremy, I want you to know. The Bitmoji thing is... He's cooled on it. Jeremy's cooled on the bitmoji. Bitmoji's only cool if you're doing it to be a super ironic jerk to people who hate bitmoji. So I have a cousin, hates it, refuse to communicate with him in any other way. Because I know I'm just trolling him nonstop.

Yeah. There's one, I believe there's a cartoon of like, of your avatar just like lying face down the ground crying. My wife and I send that one to each other all the time. I like this. Actually, the range of emotions on Bitmoji is amazing. Yeah. But they're doomed, right?

Because of the I message. Yeah. I mean, pretty much, I message sounds like it's going to be Facebook, question, or Snapchat. I think that's what everyone came down to. Right. So you got to finish your story.

We only a few minutes off. Oh. So now I'm leaving on a trip on the 30th. I'm going to be gone all of July, and I was really hoping to bring a lightweight laptop with me for my adventures to be revealed. And you still have a 13-inch pro. I don't know. No, no, no.

I just have this heavy computer literally with a crack in the screen. I'm not bringing in this on my trip, and I do not know what to do. I need to buy something, and I need to keep it. Yeah. Well, I mean, why don't you get anything else? We can get like a Chromebook? I think honestly because I don't know how to start shopping for it, to be like totally honest. Really?

Yeah. You know that you have many friends in the technology media industry who can just tell you which one to buy. Listeners. I was going to maybe start a forum. underscore Fumo. Is that right? Yeah. At Nicola underscore Fumo.

Just tell her what Chromebook to buy. They're all going to tell you it's the Toshiba Chromebook 2, which is fine. Can I roll up in the hip coffee shop, the Bushwick coffee shop that's trying to look like Venice, California, and open a Toshiba. Seems wrong. Here's what I'm going to say. I'm just going to say a thing. You validated everything our listeners have ever thought. What are you saying?

I'm going to say it. And you're both going to go, what? Yeah. I'm just going to say it because it's true. What you want is an HP Specter. Why? Walt reviewed that this week. Because that shit will make you look dope in a coffee shop.

It is faster than the gold MacBook that you had. It looks dope. It's super thin. It gets hot. It's hugely hot. But it looks dope. And it runs Windows 10, which is having just previewed Sierra. You'll miss out on your Mac stuff.

but Windows 10 is pretty good. I don't need to talk at the computer and have it do stuff for me. You don't need to do that in Windows. You can type or talk. It's your choice. What I'm saying is that like Siri on the Mac is not like a hot, exciting thing to me.

No, it makes no sense. Like I'm not craving that at all. Hang on. I'm excited to show this to you. It's like really pretty. It's black, it's got gold hinges, it's got a cool HP logo. Oh, this is nice.

It looks like you should be using it in a bathroom in a nightclub. Yes. That's exactly what it looks like. Yeah, it looks good. That's you. How much is it? You should write a review of that for us.

Yeah? Yeah. A real consumer review? Yeah, I bought this crazy ass HP laptop. And this is what I would like. HP and me. Yeah. Becoming my mother.

Yeah. That's the thing you should do. These are coming up with pitch ideas live on the air. Yeah, okay. We're going to make you buy shit on your debit card. What's the return policy? I mean, we have one upstairs. Oh, okay.

The return policy is like, don't fuck it. back here. Yeah, all right. Cool. Yeah, I'll do that. All right. Tell me another, you got two minutes. Tell me another Nicola out in the world story. Well, I just came back from the Adirondacks. Oh, yeah. The amount, 600 million, wait, yes. I don't remember how many acres. It says when you drive in, how many, it literally says like 600 million acres of forest or something.

Do you just pronounce million is a million? But my friend and I were like, that can't be right. But then we realize we have no idea how big of an acre is. Like, well, I don't know what that is. Really? I know, no clue. I just know that when someone buys something that's like on an acre, like that's a big property, I think. Aren't you from Wisconsin?

Yeah. I feel like you grew up with a lot of people who lived on half acre lots. No, because I grew up in like city suburbs, so everything is right next to each other. Yeah, that's part right. That's a half hour, half acre lot. Yeah, there's like pretty standard. Oh, well, no one was talking about the sizes. Well, I was a particularly pretentious child.

Stephen, I've seen your family, has outgrown your half acre. But the cool thing about... Another brother, you say? No. That's awful. What? The big benefit of the mountains is that you lose... Can you just imagine like eight-year-old me with my huge Indian curly hair?

Be like, ooh, another family members. It's awful. It doesn't even make a lot of sense. Does it? Okay. In the mountains. you lose reception, which was cool and freeing, and led to me removing Instagram and Twitter from my phone, which was nice, except that I had like light anxiety of people trying to communicate with me on either. And I was like, I can't have to go home.

I'm out in the world. And what am I going to do? And I was like, maybe this is good. And then I'm like, am I just doing this to prove a point? I don't know. But then it was kind of nice just being like, I can't. Right. And I did read the news more.

There you know. Be a no connection. You're like reading newspapers. Yeah. I read newspapers. Do you like that better or worse than using your phone? It was nice. I feel like I'm a better attention span than I used to.

And I think it's partly because I'm not looking at a lot of things on the computer all week. Right before we got on air, Nicola looked at Paul and said, I just read your offline series. Yeah. I'm very concerned with the next story Nicola pitches me is I'm going offline for a year. No, no, no, because it's been done. Otherwise, I totally would. No, I read that as kind of a like, what am I getting? going to go through because I definitely spend a lot less time online and it feels amazing. But I miss out

on the memes, but I don't care. It's fine. You have to go. Okay. We love you very much. The listeners love you. Be back soon. Audio Adventures with Nicola are going to be a regular part of this show. Yeah. Bye guys. Bye. On July 13th, Mr. Robot, the 2015 Peabody Award and Critics Choice Awards winner returns for a second season to USA Network, starring Golden Globe and SAG award nominee Rami Malick and Golden Globe Award winner, Christian Slater, also from Pump Up the Volume, the best movie ever made. Mr. Robot follows Elliot, a cybersecurity engineer by day and vigilante hacker by night,

who follows a mysterious leader to join Hacker Group F Society. This show is sick. Have you seen the show? It's great. Watch it. I command you. They put their skills to test in taking out E-Corp, a giant conglomerate that owns the entire world's personal and banking information, but when they pull the hack off, they

quickly realized they had no idea what they're getting into. This summer is, they actually knew what they're getting into. There's other surprises. But it's a great show. Mr. Robot shows actual hacking techniques like the use of Linux and Netscape, not, other methods or techniques. Netscape? What?

I don't know. DDoS attacks and root kits. I actually talked to Cora Adana. I was on a panel with him. He's one of the writers. They actually have like major security consultants come in and like, do this. It's great. You got to watch a show.

Anyway, Mr. Robot returned season two Wednesday, July 13th at 10. And if you're in Central Time, the best time. Chicago time, 9 Central and USA Network. Seriously, watch the show, and then there's actually a bunch of Verge stuff around this like big Verge stuff, big Vergecast stuff in ways you won't even expect. We're going to use Linux and Netscape. Now I'm scared this is like an actual thing. What? Linux.

A Netscape attack? They use Netscape. On Linux. Not Netscape Navigator. We're back. It's the Vergecast. Nicholas gone. Ashley's here. She's never buying an Android phone again. Her email address is Ashley.com. Oh my God. Don't do this to me. Deere, what were you saying?

I was just saying, is it because I message? Because that's the thing that has me locked down to the iPhone pretty tightly right now. And, I mean, I saw my mom this weekend and she has a galaxy and it legit gave me anxiety to try to use it. I was hunting for five minutes trying to find her settings. and I was like, I can't handle it. I don't know. They're right there at the top. She had, no, she had, I don't know what she did to it. It just, it's like, ooh, it was grim.

See, vindicated. I think people are going to see that it doesn't have a headphone jack, and they're going to say, I'm going to wait. Neil, it was right. But what if they do it for the rest of their phones? They're going to pick it. They're going to pick it from the Apple store, eating Magnum ice cream bars. Yeah.

Screaming my name. All right. They're back. we have a segment on the show. It's called something, gadget, something. No, it's called gadget bonanza. You know this.

Gadget Bonanza? It's true. That was Ashley's idea. Gadget Bonanza? Yeah. All right. She named it five weeks ago when we started the segment.

My strong feeling is that Ashley has not spoken off on the show. So Ashley, lead us on this bonanza of gadgets. I can't wait to lead you. What I love most about the bird is the overwhelming enthusiasm. Is this where I get to tell you about my favorite gadget this week?

Really, whatever you want. If you want this to be like a metaphor about life. How deep can I get? I'm going to say about my favorite gadget this week. And it's like not exciting. So just like brace yourself. Sell it some more. Okay, stay with me.

It's a hearing aid. Yeah. And it is the world's first quote unquote Internet of Things hearing aid. Okay. And I actually am really excited about it. Because as we know, like the Internet of shit, Internet of Things sucks. Yeah. I hate it all.

It's funny, but whatever. And this actually is useful. It works with if this than that. Yeah. And so, you know, if someone has a hearing aid, this one, they can say, oh, if my smoke alarm goes off, like, send a noise through my hearing aid. Or if my door unlocks, send a ping to me. And I think that's actually the most genius use of the internet of things.

Yeah. I really like the idea that will be bionic, right? Like, the idea that things that currently we think of is helping disabled people will one day become so much superior that regularly able people will be like, I want that too. Yeah. And this is bionic. like the you know like

maybe in the future like I'll have like a little tingle and like oh am I like that's just me staring into your eyes Paul what's the what's the bone that's below the last rib

Galacarous that's I just I just made that I don't know I'm what I look like a doctor it's like connected to the hip I do maybe it's the hip

like my hip will tingle when the dishwasher's done right I'll just have like those ambient senses of what's going on with my home, it'll be integrated into my body. I feel like this hearing aid is a perfect example.

Yeah, I'm super into. Wait, so here's my question. How do you buy it? That's a good question. They have a website. Yeah. But it's a UK company. Okay.

Because my, the thing, this is weird. If you ever thought to yourself, I should buy a hearing aid. It's actually really hard to do. Because the whole, like, industry, if there's any want to be entrepreneurs out there, go disrupt this. Make some, like, cool headphones that, like,

plug into your. They actually have them. They have like the totally wild. It's the Broggy Dash. Like tune the world around you. Yes. Yes. That's what more.

The market and the hearing aid market are going to collide. It's going to be great. Yeah. And a bunch of weird websites are going to be out of business. Because that, if you just search for like, buy a hearing aid, you just fall into the worst pit of like skeezy branded content in the entire world. Don't you need to go to a doctor or something like that? Yeah, you're supposed to.

But then there's like sketch, not doctors who are like. Yeah. What's the name of the product? Oh, man, I hate, there's no vowels in it. Come on. This is another fun gadget thing you have to deal with every day is companies who name their products, things that are not able to be pronounced. Yeah. Like they don't think about people actually talking about their product.

What's it called? Go ahead. Okay, it's the O-P-N, so I suppose the open. The open. And the company name is O-T-Con? O-T-Con. O-T-C-O-N. O-T-R-I.

O-T-R. I don't know. Oticon is a character from the Metal Gear Solid series. If you are so hardcore, like, no, this shit will be by your neck. We're not going to Metal Gear. We cannot get into Metal Gear right now. No, it's, right? They're going to build the nanobots.

They're going to fill your body with Stub. You're turning into things. 40 hours later. Yeah. You're going to be part of the network. You're watching a cutscene. Still. Oh my God, a quick time event.

Is that happening right now? Great hearing aid. No, Otocon. It's a whole thing. He's like your nerdy friend. His name is Hal. I know so much about Metal Gear, but I could not tell you what happens in that game. All right, Paul, it's your turn.

It's Benazami. The Spot Mini. What's that? It's the new Boston Dynamics robot. Oh, the giraffe one. Okay. Colin thinks it's a giraffe. And you know what?

Colin's his own man and he can think whatever he wants. I think it's a robot dog with an arm on the back that is also kind of its face sometimes. Let me ask you a question. What is the difference between a dog and a giraffe with an arm? Well, for one, there's two versions of the Spot Mini. The arm is optional. Okay. Right?

It has a head either way. But when it has an arm, it's easy to see that the arm, the hand of the arm is kind of like a face. But it doesn't even remind me of, you know. Let me ask you this question. Yeah. When I'm doing this right now, do you think my hand is my face? Yeah. It's really easy.

For the audio listener, maybe. taking a sock puppet with my hand right now. It's really easy. If you're in your car right now, hold up your hand. You think that it's a dog because you probably have read, after you recommended reading Werner Vinge's Rainbow's End, he also wrote a trilogy of sci-fi books that included race of alien dog-like creatures and used their heads like mouths,

or their mouths like hands. Fire upon the deep. Yeah. Deepness in the sky. I didn't read the other. I bet you that, like, there's a pretty good chance of folks from, boss robotics are deep nerds and this is what they're

inspired by. The first time I read Firepon on the Deep I was like, oh my gosh, it starts off with the most epic like AI coming becoming sentient ever and just killing everybody and people are trying to get off the planet

and not let this virus of an AI loose like, yes, oh my gosh, this is going to be the best book ever. Second chapter, Talking Dogs. I was like, no. All right. We got a few minutes left. The bonanza's over.

We got lighting round. Yeah. All right, Dieter, lighting round. MacOS Sierra, you previewed the beta this week. It's going to make you want to pay for iCloud. Really? It's fine. It's good. Yeah.

Is it time? They set up so that your desktop and your documents folder automatically sync to iCloud, which is great. Like if you aren't already deep into Dropbox or One Drive, just being able to have regular people have their stuff synced across the cloud is stupendous. but you're going to run out of space on iCloud so you're going to want to get that subscription. Do your photos work like that too?

Yeah. Apple's photos thing is a hot mess. Super hot mess. It's a bit better in Sierra. I haven't tried it on iOS 10, of course. But the face thing is like working. It like recognizes faces again. I'm not worried about the face.

I mean, literally I did a thing and I had to re-sync the photos to my phone and it sync them all those previews and now when I go back too far and I click on it, it has to load the photo from the cloud as a file instead of, it's just annoying. Right, that's really terrifying to me, the idea that, because I like this setup where Apple doesn't physically remove something from your computer

until they know they've had it backed up, right? But there's no world where you're trying to clean up storage and you just take a folder and it's like, oh, I bet that's backed up and you put that in the trash. Yeah. That's still too scary. Way too scary. So I'm looking forward to that time But maybe we don't have to do that

If Apple gets smart enough about this I just saw this thing I think I figured out Apple still thinks people are bad at computers I don't think that's true anymore People are Yeah Apple knows exactly how bad they are Because people walk into the Apple store

And talk to geniuses all the time Explaining exactly how bad at computers they are But go with me in this Right Apple their stuff is like too abstracted so you can't get better because you never know what it's doing Yes

Yeah I can't get AirDrop to work AirDrop is supposed to be magical I turn on Bluetooth, turn on Wi-Fi Get everything real close Make sure everything's on the right now working I'm used as much technical knowledge as I could possibly apply to AirDrop which they allow very little And it never works

They just never see each other Yeah AirDrop usually works for me It's stuff like ICloud where it's like this like mysterious why don't my photos work anymore and then the only way to figure it out is to be as deep as possible. But I don't know. Ashley, I'm going to give you a hard one. It's like the shittiest one on the list. I'm going to ask you how much you know about Microsoft acquiring LinkedIn.

LinkedIn? Wait, I got to do that line. The most exciting deal of the century? LinkedIn? Yeah. Do you use LinkedIn? No. Do you know anybody uses LinkedIn besides recruiters?

PR people. Yeah. I get so many PR. people. I think the idea that you start to write a letter in Word and then LinkedIn starts doing stuff in the background is kind of awesome, but also kind of terrifying. It's awesome for a very specific sect of people. I think the, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, professionals. Not us. No. We have a gadget bonanza. For God's sake. I always hated LinkedIn and then I listened to this economics podcast called Econ Talk with Russ Roberts. And he interviewed the founders of LinkedIn.

And they're like pretty smart people. Yeah. And they wrote this book called The Alliance. And it's pretty, it's kind of this new way of work where employees kind of bounce around company to company and everybody's just trying to help each other succeed and stuff. Some real hippie shit. But they're like, they're like really smart. Yeah.

I don't doubt that they're really smart. I just think that they are still a social network and they desperately depend on user churn. And they sold the Microsoft because they couldn't keep turning users forever. And now hopefully if you use Outlook and you're like, I need this email address for personal of the company, LinkedIn was like, give it to you. Yeah. That's all I want in this world. I guess so.

It's giving the email address. Okay, Paul. Yeah. Project Scorpio. The next generation Xbox. Yeah. So. The savior of all our hopes and dreams.

I know you three is a couple weeks ago, but I just want to hear about it. I think it just became like the totally natural thing to do. This is the exact thing that consoles couldn't ever do. This is the exact reason why PCs are always going to win is because you can have the latest graphics card every year, every couple of years. And now both of the consoles are going to have like a mid-cycle upgrade. PlayStation Neo and Project Scorpia, both of them are not official names. Also, the Wii U, I mean, it's not going to be Nintendo and X.

Nintendo's doing this as well. All of these console life cycles are being cut short. Yeah. I don't know. It just makes a ton of sense. I'm super going to buy NextGen PS4 with VR. I think one of the reasons why this is all I want in the world. This is possible in PS4.

Yeah. Well, this is a nice thing about this gives me a do-over. It's like I screwed up and I'm going to Xbox 1. Me too. So now I can get like a midterm. That's not the right word for it. By the way, when we're our best by we're looking at like 100-inch TVs and I was like, Ashley, we're going to put 100-inch TV in your life and see how it changes it.

We're also going to throw away your laptop and they use it on a PC. in the VR headset with like multiple displays. It's going to be an eye by power. Here's what we're going to do with Ashley. We're going to do terrible stunts. That's all I care about. Dang. That would actually really shake up my world.

What if we only let you do your job in VR? With like massive windows of virtual desktop spread out all around you. See, I'd take a pay cut to do that. Well, I figured out how this is going to work. Actually, you get a raise. So that was a nice. thing is all of these are the the architecture is very much a PC now yeah um and and so because you know previously consoles have had very exotic exotic like the PS3 was a power PC based

yeah machine like they've always been weird and now they're not weird anymore and I think that gives console makers a lot more flexibility to upgrade I'm into it okay we gotta wrap up I got to tell you this story. In 1873, Golden, Colorado, I don't know if you know this, home to minor, Churchill, when the minor sat down for a while, this are a banquet, Mr. Coors, we learned his first name, Adolf, by the way, bought a beer worthy of the occasion. That beer was known as Coors, the banquet beer. Honestly, I got to tell you this, I drink a lot of Coors Light. Just a fact of my life, when I'm in the mountains, that's why I'm drinking. His name used to be spelled, K-H-O-R-S, but it was changed when he came to America. All right. There's so many other things to

listen to the amount of information on those other things much higher than this show, although this show continues to be extremely popular. And I encourage you to reinforce that popularity by going on iTunes, giving us five stars. Do that right now while you drink a cold, refreshing cores light. Anyway, Walt and I do a show called Control Alt Delete. Chris Plaint does a show called What's Tech, Emily and Liz, wonderful show, one of my favorite shows for GSP, Keraswisher, over on the Recode side, does Rico decode, Peter Kafka, does Recode Media, and Lauren Good. versus fame. Too embarrassed to ask.

That's her show. You can listen to it whenever you want. Well drinking. Any beer you want. Oh, you didn't see that coming. Pay that extra dime for that last mention course. Anyway, that's it. That's our show.

Paul is Future Paul on Twitter. Ashley. Ashley are Carmen. Yeah. You are Carmen. That's awful. I'm reckless. Dieter Bone is Backlon.

Please talk to us. We love hearing from you. We love your thoughts. We love your opinions. Got through the night. Rock and roll.