The Vergecast - Planet of the Apps, Verizon unlimited, and Sonos audio

Episode Date: February 17, 2017

Hey, y’all. This week’s episode of Vergecast is the first in our new studio. And our heroes (Nilay, Paul, and Dieter, in case you were unaware) are still getting used to it. But you can’t see them while you’re listening, so it doesn’t really matter! It’s a new look but it has the same great taste. Topics on this week’s show include: lots of TV talk, including Apple TV and Caavo; more unlimited data plans; a bit of consumer audio speak; and a few anecdotes and reviews sprinkled in. And Megan Farokhmanesh stops by briefly to talk about her experience using a new dating app called Hater. Does she love it or hate it? Tune in to find out. 02:17 - Code Media 03:23 - Apple headlines, iPhone 8 rumors 09:58 - TV stuff 14:34 - Planet of the Apps 21:54 - Caavo 33:32 - Verizon’s new unlimited data plan 40:52 - Hater app with Megan 46:48 - Paul’s weekly segment “Dieter wouldn’t let me make a slurping noise for the name of this segment” 49:08 - This Belle doll will dance for you, but only if you attempt to code 53:08 - Sonos news / consumer audio talk 1:02:28 - Android apps on Chrome OS Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Just hit record. Everybody shut up. Hello. Welcome to the Vergecast. The flagship podcast of Theorge.com. We're in a fancy new studio. Dieter Bone is here in person. Hello.

Hi. This is this volume knob work? Yeah. Yeah. What does this button do? Paul Miller's here, just literally just turning all the knobs and pushing all the buttons. This is a mute. Oh.

Yeah. You can be like, ah, uh, uh. Wait. This is for like coughing, right? Yeah. It's a cough on. This is great. I will say that it's our first episode in our brand new professional studio, and we're acting like we're five.

But that's fine because we all hopped up on our custom vodka brand. Says vodka. Cut through the night. Snip, snip, snip. Anyway, it's the Vergecast. We're going to talk about a whole bunch of stuff. We should get into it. A lot of news this week.

Yeah. News all over the place. It's just everywhere. I think if you've been listening to the show for some time, You will know that basically all I care about is television. You being Eli Patel. The host of this, the Vergecast. I just don't think we did the intro.

Well, I said your name. He said my name. Really? Yeah. He introduced this podcast as a flagship podcast with Verge.com. Yeah. He mentioned Cizzer vodka. All right.

I'm just making sure we're checking all the boxes. All the things are I. I'd like to apologize to our audience. I know you're in your car right now, probably. It was zooming down the highway. Yeah. Looking for it, bitch. Looking for love.

Whatever comes my way. It's just been, it's been a really long week. Yeah. It's, you know, every day is an endless wait for a nuclear apocalypse to take hold. And we're just going to be a little silly this week. But there's news. There's like a lot of news. Okay, let's go.

I'm really sorry. I derailed. Please go out. Yeah, you derailed by reintroducing me, which is one of, I would say, the most undermining derail. at all time. Like, oh, you're about to begin. Hey, what is your name again?

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No, I'm sorry. Who are you? I'm Paul Miller. Can you, okay. News. A lot of news.

Code media was this week. Big show produced by Friends over on the Recode side. Big Code media this year. Big Code media. I was talking to crazy. I was talking to Lauren Good last night. He was covering it for us. And she was pointing out the guest lineup from last year to this year, broadly similar.

Right? a guy from Facebook and a guy from Google and an editor of a big thing. But the context of all of those people has changed so radically. The similar answers to similar questions have outsized meaning. So Dan Rose from Facebook, we got to do something about fake. No, I think his answer was fake news is not our thing to do. But then, Eddie Q from Apple, we got to take on fake news head on, Google, same answers. Marty Barron, really, everyone should go watch this interview with Walt and Kara. Like, he is exactly the character portrayed in the movie Spotlight. Yeah.

Like, kind of growling about journalism in that way that you want an old school. He was missing, like, a glass of scotch and a cigar. Like, you should watch it. It's great. But I want to focus on the TV stuff that happened there. And a bunch of Apple stuff in general. So let me just read this list of Apple headlines from this week. Okay.

Apple announced WWC 2017 for June 5th. In San Jose, the Canada of California. The Canada. Yeah, that's great. Everybody forgets it's there. Everybody's really nice. It's really big. It's really spread out.

It's actually like surprisingly good living. I thought Vancouver was the Canada, California. But you got to drive away. Yeah. Really far. Okay. Anyway, so it's there. Mark German,

big scoop about how Apple can't get their TV stuff together. Yep. Says the next Apple TV will have 4K. He didn't say HDR, but he said a more vivid color palette. Yeah, more beautiful colors, vibrant colors, which means HDR. It has to mean HDR, because you have to build the TV to do anything. I got so many things. thoughts about that TV, about

Carmen's article. Oh, yes. We have to talk about that in general. And then Eddie Q at Code Media is like, the future of television for us is interactivity, which is crazy. Oh, shoot, I missed the cough button. I was choking

on my own disbelief at that strategy. Yeah. And then there's some rumors. The iPhone 8 will have like a function row at the bottom. Dude. The iPhone 8 will be a pump-re. Don't even.

Don't even. So, and then Apple showed a trailer for Planet of the Angels. Oh, God. So just a lot. Just like a lot of things. So we're, let's start, let's start with the iPhone. Because I know, Paul, you have a lot of thoughts about this iPhone. Yes.

And Dieter just wants to, like, basically play his old pre-review at us. It's, okay. But Paul, why don't you begin? Okay. Here's the thing. I never know if these rumors are bullshit or not. I'm really bad at keeping track of all the different analysts and their trackers. and their track records and all this stuff.

But, like, a couple weeks ago, I saw this really cool concept that I kind of like. It's like one of those, like, edge-to-edge screen iPhone concepts. And then it puts a contextual button on the screen at the bottom of the screen where the home button is. So imagine the circle around the home button still exists, but now there's various icons. And then, like, some of these mock-ups have, like, you can, like, swipe over for different tools or maybe the other tools are just along the bottom. I don't know. It's just like, it seems interesting.

It's very touchbar. I mean, they're doing this on the Mac, right? And so what I'm imagining, though, is that you would tap to use that and then you could still click it to go home. Yeah. And I've been trying to think if that would be confusing and bad and maybe overloading functionality right there. I already think, there's already 80 things that you do at the home.

Unlocking the iPhone is the worst right now. It's not great. It's really bad. I've finally gotten used to it, but it took me a while. But I still, every once a while, try to double tap when the phone is locked and I want to switch apps, but I forget that it's locked and I double tap. And then it goes to the pay thing. Yeah.

And then you're just paying people. You're just shooting your credit card waves of people. I've lost a lot of money that way. That's why I always tail you with an NFC read. It's just I got one. No, I think unlocking the phone. Like, side unlock was pretty iconic. And I get that it's faster with touch ID and you want more security.

but it's a little, if it's laggy at all, it's very confusing. Well, how do you guys feel about the home button doing anything more? Like, no, the home button does too much now. Being the home button for the app if you tap, is that bad? That's too many things.

Hitting the home button should take you home. That's like, the reason the iPhone was a successful like UX experience, user experience. Yeah. UX experience. Yeah. It's like the ATM machine, but it's the U.S. experience. Yeah. But is that, you hit button you went home and you could dump out

of whatever confusing screen you're on no matter what. They need to maintain that somehow. And I'm saying that could still happen. It's just that if you lightly tapped it, then that's touch ID. That's like, that's how you do your fingerprint. And if you double tap it, it does this. And if you long tap it at Siri, the button does

like 50 things. Does a lot of things. I just, if you listen to the show, you know me, you know, I'm going to bring a palm. I'm just going to do it really fast. Just get through it. It's fine. I don't mind. The two things we've heard about this phone is it's going to have inductive wireless charging, so you set it on a charging pad, Pompry.

And this gesture bar thing on the bottom, Pompry. The Pompri's gesture bar was like a, it was weirder than this, though. It did, you could swipe up on it to bring up that weird, to bring up the wavy bar. You could swipe up halfway to bring up the wavy bar to immediately launch something from anywhere, which, by the way, you still can't do on an iPhone.

Yeah. And then you could swipe to the left of it to go back, or you could swipe to the right on it to go forward. Right. And that's the rumor. It's a gesture bar. Well, it's a multifunction bar. So we don't know what those multi-multifunctions will be. I don't want mysterious, not that I love the, I love the pre.

I don't want. Also, you can swipe up on the whole of the new iPhone to reveal a hardware keyboard. Yeah. It's a hard sweat. I don't like mysterious functions. That's why the thought of something happening in the home button, because the home button is now also a screen, is more interesting.

Like, I've always very much disliked the context menu on Android. Also, right-clicking things is still often mysterious to me. Yeah. Well, it's worse on the Mac now because there's right-click and then there's force-click. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.

Look, they're obviously going towards this, like, bezel-less screen thing. Yeah. If the screen goes all the way, right? It's not good. You're not going to just use it when you're watching videos in some wrong aspect ratio. Like, it's, it's, they're going to make something happen down there. Yeah.

Yeah. And what, and this is our chance to say what we want that to be, so then later we can be disappointed when it's not the thing we want. I mean, I think they're just trying to. to reduce the bezel size of this thing, and the size of the home button creates a bezel size. So they've got to do something to make all of the rest of that useful to you. It's not just extra bezel. And I bet Johnny Ive is just not having the idea of a smaller top bezel and a big bottom bezel.

He's like, I can't. No. He's like, Tim, I can't. I couldn't possibly. But you could have a scream. And he storms away, but the building's a circle, so he comes right back. Such good point. All right, let's talk about TV stuff.

So that's the Apple TV thing. So obviously the Apple TV has been a bit of a mess. Yeah. The way I put it is their Apple has tried plans A, B, C, D, and E. So they've all failed. And now what we're looking at now, the thing they sold was Plan F. Right. And German says the current generation Apple TV had been prototyped with coax cable jacks in the back.

Which I do not understand how that would have worked at all. Why not? because you can't decode cable without cable card. Maybe they would have done a virtual software cable card, and that was one of the deals they were trying to score. Yeah, maybe, but it's, that's like, it doesn't indicate anything that you put those jacks back there. So, like, I get it, maybe, but that's a tough call.

You certainly can't be like, buy this and then buy an over-the-air antenna. That's insanity. So they obviously moved towards some cable deal thing. They still haven't been able to get any cable single-stop. sign-on deals for the TV app. Yep. They haven't been able to get Netflix in the TV app. Yep. They haven't been able to get an Amazon app on the Apple TV.

Correct. Although Eddie Q said it would be coming hopefully soon. Really? He hopes it soon. He hopes. Yeah. But, you know. You know, it turns out Eddie Q could make it happen soon if he wanted to. Yeah, he'd have to cut the 30% rate. Right. That's what they want. And they're never going to do that for anybody. They have. They do it for everybody

on subscriptions after the month. It goes from 30 to 15. The TV does the stuff with the thing and the Hume and their hand. Yeah, yeah. They're never going to do. Not for Amazon, right? It's just like they're never going to do it from Microsoft and office. Apple's been trying to do this long enough that I don't really need them to do it anymore.

Yeah. It's like my TV situation is pretty much fine. Watch some Netflix. Every once in a while, watch some Hulu, watch some HBO. Do you have a Roku? No, just like Chromecast and web browser. But like there's this sense that. That Xbox that Apple is possibly getting out innovated by Amazon right now.

By everybody. By everyone. The other stat in this Bloomberg report was that their sales are falling. So they don't break it out because it's in other devices and according to reports. But the CFO of Apple said year over year Apple TV sales are down. So then if all they do is come out with a 4K one, which they are easily two years behind them doing. because even like $500 TVs now, like 4K TVs. So everyone has one of these panels now if you're buying a new TV.

And if you're buying a new TV, you might be buying a new box. Right. So I understand why you would still sell the 1080P one because there's a lot of 1080p TVs out there, but everybody buying a new TV wants a new box. So they're going to do that and they're going to do HTR and that's it. I mean, look, here's what is going to happen. They're going to end up hunting and just doing a streaming bundle package just like Sony View and just like Sling.

It's going to be disappointing, but they're just going to do it, and it's going to do fine. They've learned that with like Apple Music, for example, that... I've got to write this piece. It doesn't have to be a game changer for it to be fine for them. I think Apple Music has gotten really good. Maybe you should write that story? It's been in the back of my mind. But is this it?

Is this all they could do after all of that promise? Well, so when I saw the thing that they're going to release a 4K HDR Apple TV, I'm like, okay, you know what? I'm not expecting from Apple anymore, like Paul, like mind-blowing game-changing innovation. Like, I don't expect them to disrupt anything anymore. Comcast put out an app this week, the Comcast Xfinity stream app, which brings live TV and your DVR to your phone. Uh-huh. Is it an app or is it an operating system? No one knows. Okay. If the CEO of Comcast can call me and explain to me what he thinks an operating system is, that would be great. By the way, disclosure somewhere at Comcast, there's a person who,

Put some money into Fox Media. He's very sad because every now and again we talk about Comcast. But anyway, it's on the phone. No Xfinity app for the Apple TV. Yeah. Which is insane to me, right? If Comcast believes the Xfinity X1 platform is an operating system that is expressed through apps, which is insane, but that is their belief.

And it is not on what I would say is probably the most powerful TV set-top platform that isn't a game console. Right. I was just going to say that isn't a game console. But Apple has probably the least streaming partners, right? Yeah, well, they don't. Also, it's not that powerful because the processor and it can't handle 4K. Right. But that doesn't matter for Comcast, right?

They're not going to mean 4K for a while. So then, Eddie Q's on stage of code media. Peter Kafka is interviewing him. They run the trailer for Planet of the Apps, which I will just tell you, you should watch it. What's the word for contact embarrassment? Contact embarrassment? No, there's like an actual word. Chris Grant and Polygon is always something.

But there's some actual word for it. You know what like someone else is. contact high but for embarrassment? Yeah. There's a word for it. But it's so embarrassing. Yeah. Right?

And like the Apple. And I've seen people trying to apologize for it. Like, oh, no, it's just like you watch, I don't know, master chef, top chef time cooking show, game show. That's nothing like being a chef. Yeah. Therefore, this is the same sort of idea. Yeah. Yeah.

But no. My problem. I haven't watched the trailer because I have no interest in this show. But my problem. Do you watch Shark Tank? Is that what? No. Have you ever seen Shark Tank? Glimpses.

Imagine Shark Tank? It's not a tank of sharks. I know. I've never seen a tank of sharks. I know. No. Imagine Shark Tank. I tried to find one in Vegas.

Like, equally corny, equally low rent. Yeah. But the judges are like slightly more famous people who are just on the other side of the prime of their celebrity career. Right. And one of them is Will I am. And they're judging apps. Right. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

It's not that. It's not bad. No, no. You got it, it's a little bit backwards. It's a combination of Shark Tank and the voice for nerds. Yeah. No, I'm trying to describe why it's embarrassing to watch. So you go.

Well, you just described sounds pretty great. Because if all the people have their chairs turn and then you just listen to someone code. Then you hit the big button. So you go. Like that sounds like a good coder. So the developers go. Is that touch a little? typing.

They have to do an escalator pitch while they go up an escalator. Then they present their idea to panel of coaches who include Will I.M. Who literally never made a good gadget in his life. And I believe it's still the creative director of Intel. It's bad, which is just bad. Gwendozao, who runs Goop, which literally only sells garbage. Jessica Albaugh, who runs The Honest Company, which is actually like huge success,

except they keep getting sued for lying about. Not being full of chemical. Like, whatever. But she's like, that's like probably the highest one. Wait, who's the fourth? It's a VC, right? Gary Vaynerchuk. Yeah, yeah.

Who runs VaynerMedia. I don't know. He was like a wine flogger. He's obviously much more successful than that, but I just like call him a wine blogger. So then you pitch your app to them and then they are like, come be on my team. So then like, you have to go spend more time with Will I. Right. Right.

And he's like, add more beats to your product or whatever Will I.m says in media. when he's a creative of Intel. And then you go and pitch your, after all the coaching, you go and pitch your idea to a group of investors from Lightspeed Capital who say things like, what's your burn rate? Because that's what VC's always say in every meeting. And then if you win, you get featured play in the app store. And then it's called Planet of the Apps.

And so the season finale will be out on a beach with a giant statue of Tim Berners-Lee, and the winner will have realized that they destroyed the open web. And he'll scream you maniacs. This is my thing. If you're going to use a pun for the name of a thing, it can't be like one letter off like that. It's just too confusing. Every time I see old headlines, like, oh, there's another planet A's movie?

It's James Franko in it? So then there's that and there's carpal karaoke and they're doing that. So those are the two shows are doing. That's their big attempt to take on Netflix and Amazon. It's just like there's like a rumor that they were going to buy Ron Howard's thing. I mean, there's rumors, but you know what exists? Plan it of the fucking apps. Yeah.

And if that's how you're planning to take on House of Cards and every Marble Defender's movie and transparent, like, that's not going to work for you. And that Eddie Q is like the future of this is interactivity. Mm-hmm. Right? Like, we're going to do CNN and people are going to vote on their iPhones about whether they like various executive orders.

And it's like that, A. You know what that sounds like? Multimedia. That's how, first of all, it sounds like, American Idol. Like, I got a copy of Macro Media Director guys. Right? That's some CD-ROM shit right there.

No, like I did a video when Microsoft's doing Xbox One. I remember this distinctly because it was mind-blowing the way he was talking about it, Xbox Live back in the day. Like, we're going to bring TV to Xbox One. And, you know, their vision was American Idol is the world's biggest video game. Right? You watch an hour-long cutscene. There's an interactive portion and then you watch an hour-long cutscene. and if we can bring that truly to the Xbox, da-da-da-da.

He's like, these are video games. Three years later, Apple's like, we're going to do voting online with the Apple TV. And it's like, I don't think that you are. Like, I don't, those are video games, right? If you want to make your thing a video game console, you should just make a video game console. Yeah. That's interactive TV. Like, that's how people interact with their TVs all day long.

I do it frequently. industry. So I just don't know what they're up to. Voting on the Apple TV, can the first poll be, do you know which way is up on your Apple TV remote? Yeah. Everyone's like, no. Because they're like, get it wrong. It was just a very, I just think about TV all the time.

Apple has been talking about TV. It's been a hobby. They think it's such an area of intense interest. They keep saying these things about it. But they're just landing at the same place. Microsoft was three years ago. Which is we can't get the deals. We'll sit next to it.

Everyone else's apps can be on our thing. And we're going to chase after some in our activity. They have the scale to do things in a way that no one else can do. But their product is not as good as a Roku right now. Apple TV is Apple's Windows phone. Boom. This show's over. I'm just hitting this mute button right now.

Sorry, that was on. This is poor Andrew. It's got a tile interface. Yeah. No, it... The German, his report, everyone should be on Bloomberg. They said they tried big new interface ideas

and they didn't break away from that. I bet you can get angry birds on Apple TV. I don't know. It's just to me it's a thing. And then there's other big TV news at code, which is I'm obsessed with. Right. You should read an ad before we get into this thing.

I should read an ad? Yeah. But anyway, today's episode of the Vergecast is brought to you by Krizal NoGler Onzes. If you wear glasses and you have glasses and the new fingerprints, smother, scratches, and glares can be a constant obstruction in your vision, a huge distraction. Sometimes you're going to focusing more on what's on your glasses than what's going on around you. That's why everyone should love Krizal and no glare lenses.

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Go to Crizal.com to learn more. That's C-R-I-Z-A-L-com, start living life in the clear. All right, so this Cavo thing. Cavo. Game-changing, some say. How many A's in C-A-L? Two A's.

C-A-S-O. C-A-O. C-A-O. A lot of people think it's Cava, which is actually just a delicious, sparkling wine. Right. That's the end of that stuff.

Cavo. It's a big, wide, flat box. Like, imagine a coffin. Well, it's like, I don't know. It's not a coffin. It's like two B wide, like three inches thick, right? When Deider said, imagine a giant box, you went to coffin? It has, it has, it has, HDMI inputs.

Imagine a Wii balance board. It's got an IR blaster. Made out of wood. And some other, a couple other inputs. And it does a bunch of stuff that you expect a TV box with HTML inputs to do. So, like, you plug in an Apple TV, it knows it's an Apple TV. You plug in. You don't expect other TV boxes to that.

You can identify it over HGMI CEC. It's like, oh my God, they're doing all this stuff with HMIC. Wait a minute. HGMI CEC is a garbage standard. Almost nothing supports it. Oh, no, actually, a lot of things support it, but they support it in, like, inaccurate, non-standard, weird different ways. The Xbox, one, doesn't support it all.

All right, Microsoft products are. Don't support it. So, I'm just going to. You look at it and they create an interface that controls everything, a single interface for all of your boxes, and you're like, how the hell do that? And then Nelai knows. I do. So the way to think about this is actually not that it's a box.

I think they screwed up really bad by saying to anyone that it was a box, by revealing the box, any of that. It's not the box. It doesn't matter. And then Gweth Paltrow's head. It's really weird. Really weird demo. Walt Morin, we're just so disturbed. A great movie.

That's seven. And then Kevin Spacey was there. You know it's going to happen when they want to make the cavo two? What's that? They're going to want to put more HTML ports in it, and they're going to resurrect the Taco Bell Dog. Oh, my God.

Okay. And he's going to say, here's what they should have said to people. I think we need a bigger box. This is the worst episode that we've ever done. Here's what they should have said to people. We built the world's best universal remote. It costs $400, which is $100 more than the Harmony Elite, but it can control everything in your rack with 100% accuracy.

It can do search. It can find content anywhere that you want. you can use all your regular remotes. It's the world's best remote control. That's all they should have said. Sure. Because all that's happening is that, you know, this huge box they've built is just a big input switcher. And then you can like search for things.

It puts up loading screens while it operates the interface screen in the back. How does it work? They didn't want to tell anyone. And they went down this other line about search and discovery. But it's doing this crazy thing where I called them at 930 at night and I basically yelled. I figured it out you have to tell. me, and they very sheepishly told me that they are monitoring the H-DMI stream of every input, recognizing what's on the screen, and then issuing commands intelligently based on what the system sees.

So they're doing, like, AI control of these devices. So it has an IRBlaster, it has HTMLIC as API control. But literally, their interface is like clicking around and watching the interface move and reacting to it just like a person, which is amazing. So, like, if you've been listening to the show for years, you know that I don't like IR Blasters. That's why I'm so surprised that you're... Because why do you not like IR Blasters? IR Blasters are state-based devices. So I have a regular harmony.

I push the button. Oh, and it gets out of the correct state. So, like, it just fires a macro off in my TV. It turns on the receiver. It sends an input code to the receiver. It turns on a TV. And then it's, it thinks, no matter what else happens, the remote believes. that it's set up to watch TiVo.

If I screw something up, the remote's broken. This is a big problem with IR blasters. Or you have an Xbox one, it controls your cable box. It fires off a channel number. It misses one channel. The channel number is screwed up. This is the reason it's bad. So you don't just hate the idea of blasting IR.

You hate the end result. As a human being holding your remote, you're like a meat bag IR blaster. But it works because your brain can compensate for the failure of IR as a, is a, a, a, reliable communication channel. This is technically very impressive, and I'm so happy for them. Yeah. But there's something to me that feels like if you got to this point, Kavo didn't do anything wrong, but somewhere...

The whole industry did something wrong. Somewhere, somewhere along the line, really messed up. Like you, it's easier and more, you know, they have investors, I'm sure their investors want some return, blah, blah, blah. It's easier and potentially more lucrative to deploy machine vision and television surveillance into American homes than to fix IR Blasters. Or to make a deal with Comcast.

Or to make a deal with Comcast. Or to make HTML CCC work. Yeah, you don't need all this stuff. If Apple has deals to get TV on their box, right? To have Amazon on the box. Everyone else runs into the deal problem. Everyone else runs into the control problem. We're just going to deploy Skynet.

And that'll fix it. And that's where they've gotten. And it looks brilliant. Yeah. So I talked to them at length. They're like, they're not ready to launch the thing. they're a little sheepish to admit that they're doing this vision. I think they have some data and privacy problems.

You think that Apple's going to like... How do you block it? You can block it with HTML, you know... HTCP? HTCP shit. So you can't, right? Like, my receiver can do... No, it'll only play to content...

It'll only play on devices that support HTTP. No, that's fine. So it's in the HTTP chain. I asked them in this question. Okay. So I have a pioneer receiver, right? Everything's plugged into it to HTML. It passes HTTP.

Uh-huh. But it can do picture tuning. Sure. Right? It can modify the HTTP signal because it's in the chain. Okay. And the only output of the chain is a protected device. Uh-huh.

Right. So you can't break HTTP and send it somewhere else. Right. But you can sit in the protected chain. Wait. Is this going to screw up, like, latency for video games? Yes. It depends.

Maybe. It just depends. Like almost every smart TV, like they recommend to basically go through. turn off every setting so that it doesn't do anything to get the minimum limit. I think for most people, they might not notice for super hardcore gamers, you're still going to want your console plugged into

whatever special input you. I wonder if it'll... Yeah, I mean, there's also, like, HDR. Like, I actually can't use PSVR because it ruins HDR because it can't do XFR through the PSVR. Oh, my God. I mean, so, okay, but like Apple could,

like, they could literally, like, glitch the screen in a way that a human eye can't see, but it would screw up the machine learning. Like, they could do some, like... There's a million things. So, the Apple, one is particularly, Paul, like, you're like, how did we get here? There's no API for the Apple TV. There's no way to pass a link to like Netflix and the Apple TV.

So when you say, I want to watch Netflix and you've set the Apple TV as your default Netflix provider, it literally puts up a blue screen that says loading, and then behind that screen starts furiously clicking around the Apple TV interface for the Kavo app that you have preloaded, finds it, opens it, that app doesn't do anything, except wait for a deep link sent to it from the Cavo Cloud, which then passes to the Netflix app on the Apple TV. That is the hackiest hack, right? Like, sign a... That's just crumcast. Yeah, but like, that's where they've had to go. It's insanity, and that's where they are, and it works better. It works pretty fast. You can watch the video, Walt and Lauren did the demo on stage. You go watch it. It works pretty fast. But that's where we are.

And I think it might be the single best remote thing. You're getting one of these. I'm absolutely getting one. Yeah. I haven't upgraded my Harmony 1 to a Harmony Elite because I think the Harmony Elite is so bad. Yeah, it is not good. So I have this like decrepit Harmony 1 and I keep buying like refurbished batteries on eBay for it. Because they're still NICAD batteries.

So they die really fast. So like if I'm going to spend $300 in a Harmony 1, might as well spend $400 on like the future and have Terminator. I don't think, how do you break it? You find ways. I don't know, man. Somebody will be sued. If you break it, then you are effectively breaking a human being's ability to operate your system too. Right?

Right? They're just watching the screen and issuing IR commands, which is what people do. Right? Like, I think they are, the reason they were so unwilling to talk about it is because they have so much power that what they want is deals, but they don't want everyone to be mad at them. Oh, they just, they want to be built into the next Samsung TV. Yeah. I think there's a million potential. Or they want to build the next Apple TV.

Yeah. And Apple, this is a reason for Apple to actually make a TV. Right? Yeah. You can plug everything into it and you can just talk to Siri and then Siri will find it for you and you're done. Oh, man. Yeah. Right.

Like that's pretty wild. It's very hacky. It's very un-apple in that way because it's not integrated. Right. But it's smart. Yeah. By the way, every smart TV. They made Sherlock once.

By the, every smart TV. already does this kind of content detection. Yep. So, you know, if you're LG or Sony or whatever and you already, like, know what's on the screen, it's like kind of a short jump to this. Yeah. Although Walt says he talks to them and they have like 54 patents. Maybe that's enough.

Yeah. I mean, who knows? I think it's genius. You see this idea and then you do sort of look at like Samsung and LG and Sony be like, why didn't you think of that? Well, why didn't you figure this out forever ago? Yeah. But, you know, sometimes.

that you got to be bold. Yeah. I think it's one of those ideas that's so obvious. It's like, I was saying to Wall, yes, I'm controlled.

Like, the reason I'm so excited about this is not because I really want another universal remote or I think everyone should get it or whatever. It's just the first application of machine learning and vision to a consumer product that seems so smart. It's like a new thing. It's a totally new idea.

It's true. You know what? I'm sorry. I was skeptical. Right. It's just, how often do you see wild new products like this? Like usually we're like the phone,

the button is going to be a wider button. I mean, this is literally a robot that helps you watch TV. Yeah. By watching it for you and doing all the button clicking. And then tracking everything that you watch. This is like the older... Can you get that Titanfall for me? Older brother...

Can it look at the screen on Titanfall and make me good at that video game? That'd be amazing. Right? You'd also get banned because that's called Aimbody. God damn it. Yeah. But that's like wild, right? Like, uh...

Anyway, I'm super into it. They're coming out in June. They're pre-orders in June. They're only going to sell 5,000 this year because they're going to slow. I think they're slow rolling because they know how much power they have. I'm telling you. Also, it's $400, which is insane. But I think if they had just said, we've built the first true universal control for television,

they would have changed everything about how they're perceived. And you can hook it up to your Alexa. And you just tell your Alexa to do the thing. So you don't have to use their stupid little remote. You can do the thing that Apple originally was supposed to do on the Apple TV and didn't, which is just bark commands into the room. And this time it might actually work in the way that it never really worked that well on the Xbox. Yeah.

I gotta say that... Why doesn't Microsoft support HDY, CEC? And never mind. Because the TVs that people call Xbox's until you don't have it. Only 40% of TVs have it.

Okay. But Scorpio, they put out invites for E3. Project Scorpio's coming. They're doing their keynote a day early, I think. Yeah.

So those happen this week. Yep. 4K Xbox. And WWDC got invites for that. Yeah. We got all the June events, man.

It's good. It's fucking February, people. Let us breathe. I'm planning for C. Yes again. I hate it.

All right. Dieter, tell me about unlimited data plans. No. Verizon finally, like, capitulated and said, all right, we're doing unlimited data. And I was like, what? And Verizon's...

By the way, I just coughed for real and didn't hit the mute button. Verizon's unlimited data plan seems fine. It's 22 gigs? It's 22 gigs, and then they may or may not throttle you. It's 10 gigs of tethering, and I think video is capped at 720P. It's, like, $85 a month. It's like $80, $75, $85, $85, $85 a line for family, you know, stuff. Numbers.

Cost of money of things. You know, $80 for a single line. What's more interesting is Verizon did it, and then all of a sudden, everybody else that had been doing their unlimited plans started to fall in fucking line. T-Mobile changed their policies regarding HD video and, I think, tethering. They got rid of the day passes. Yep. And then Sprint, cleaned up a little bit of it.

After first, well, the first thing Sprint did was send out a caddy press release saying, well, our unlimited plan is better. And then they actually changed it so that it was better. Well, it's like a limited time promo. So we're getting a, yeah, we're getting like a standardized set of unlimited wireless features. The only real problem with which I have is 720P cap on video. But okay, we could talk through that. Yeah. And I also, somewhere deep down in my body, get annoyed that they treat tethered data differently from untethered.

their data. Yes. Data is data. Bits or bits. Bits or bits? Free the stream. Yeah. I thought I was going to switch off of T-Mobile maybe.

Because it wasn't doing very well for me. And I didn't think I liked this new unlimited thing. Mm-hmm. But then I realized, like, just recently, that I have not stressed about my data cap in so long. And it feels really nice. Huh. I don't stress about mine. I don't stress about mine, but I used to stress all the time.

$150 a month for my single line. on Verizon, which is bonkers. Guys. What? I literally have breaking news from the New York Times. Samsung's vice chairman was arrested and jailed after being accused of paying 36 million in bribes in exchange for political favors. Literally, the Times, a minute ago, just hit me with that.

Wow. I don't know how I also react to that, except it's just not a great, like, string for Samsung. Well, they narrowly avoided having problems with their president. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they're just going to bring down the government of South Korea. Look, it's the end times. Can we clear?

It doesn't matter how many fake screen buttons you put on your phone. Let's be clear. The world is over. Sponsored by Cresol. At least it's not smudgy. It's just very obviously the end time. What about cut through the apocalypse? Hey, you know, vodka, one of the easiest boozes to make.

Cizzer vodka, you can make it out anything. You got to pair old boots. Cizzer vodka is like the soilent of vodka as we publish our recipes. There's all these flavored vodkaes out there, but scissure vodka's flavors are like hobo. Garbage fire. Oh my God, it tastes just like, just like this barrel fire that I was at during the end time. Cut through the night because you have no choice. Snip, snip, snip.

It's always night now. Cut through the night because we haven't seen the sun in four years. It's just really, it's just not a good. episode of the show. Anyway, so that's unlimited data plans. Yeah. I will say,

thank you to all the listeners who have been tweeting at AgitPy. Please continue to do so. Keep doing it. I think this week I'm going to start retweeting all your tweets if you tweet. You're retweeting. I've been faving. Yeah, I've been faving.

Someone liked the thing, because it's a little bit less aggressive than retweeting. I'm just going for it. You're just going to go for it? I've been emailing the FCC basically every day. He's going to go on Fox Business. What? He just announced it today.

His first interview is chairman. be in Fox Business News. He had like a weird little radio interview today. But FM radios that are built. So every phone for the last whatever has got an FM radio in it. And sometimes they used to turn them on like back in the early mid-2000s. You like plug in a set of wired headphones into a 3.5 millimeter jack. And listen to the radio.

How and Aquarian who would ever plug headphones into a special phone. I feel like the only phone. And they served as the antenna so you could listen to FM radio. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like the only phones that ever had the FM radio turned on were phones that did not have 3.5 millimeter because we all remember there was a

phase where smartphones did not have 3.5 millimeters. Yeah, time is a flat circle, except for when time comes to a swift and decisive end and we're drinking our boot vodka in the Eternal Night. It's fun. Anyway, if you

if you ask ex-C commissioner, Ajipai to come on the verge cast, it's like a really easy retweet from us. Yeah. If you're ever looking fat, do it. I will say, there's so much happening in the Trump administration lately that I think Pye trying to wade into the net neutrality Title II debate, if I were him, I would just be like, you know. I'm just going to hang out. I'm just going to pull back for a minute.

We're going to let the AT&T Time Warner thing happen. Right. There's enough going on. And I think the cable, like the carriers are, they're happier with stability than instability. Yeah. It's already a bit of a policy change that, like, you know, like, hey, we decided not to go after this or look into that. Yeah, like, they're cool zero rating. Yeah.

So in a sense, there's already a bit of a rollback in that neutrality. And Paul, to your point. Hang on, maybe he wants to kill net neutrality before the apocalypse. Maybe. So that he's got that set. He's got to move quick. He's got the one antenna with, like, the radio wave. Yeah.

And he's got the wall around him. And everyone's like, I just want to send a message. That's why he wants the antenna, the FM antennas turned on in smartphones. Because when the end comes, it's the only way we're going to be able to get any information. It's the only way that we'll be able to contact Will Smith on the deck of the Intrepid. Yes. Yeah. Okay.

That was an I am legend. I got you. I got it. Do you know that movie? There's a dog. He's the vampire. Look, this is as good as time as I need to mention, Squarespace. If you have resolved to take out a new challenge, starting a business, changing careers, launching a creative project in 2017, be sure to lock down your next move with Squarespace.

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That's Verge, V-E-R-G-E for 10% off your first purchase. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. What's in the box? What's in the box? Okay, we're going to get back in the show, but Megan just stopped by, crashed. She's about to go see Logan's. She's super excited about that. She's super into this app where you date people that hate things you do.

Megan, what's up? Okay, so I want to talk about this app called The Hater that I just started using. It's a dating app. So think of like Tinder, but instead of just swiping on people's faces because you don't actually read their profiles, you just don't. You're swiping on different topics. So it'll be like, hey, what do you think about bees? And you can be like, I hate bees, I love bees. I like bees or I dislike bees.

So the idea is that it matches you based on things you hate with the idea of like, hey, You'll probably bond faster over things that you both dislike rather than like this one shitty band or whatever. But I really like it because the app has a level of cultural literacy that I've never seen in any other dating app. So it's really nice because it'll have things like the 2016 election or it'll ask you like, what do you think about all lives matter? And so I found, I know it's some deep shit. But no, it's great because people can on apps identify as Republican, Democrat, religious, not whatever. But that doesn't really tell you much about what they actually believe or things they might disagree with that fall in. to the general umbrella of whatever their party is.

But by having access to something like locker room talk, like what that phrase means to you, it's a really easy way to weed out assholes, honestly. No, I'm just like, let's see, this guy, like I literally got a guy who's like. Assholes and racist. This would be great for reading on assholes and racist. So I swiped on this guy. So like once you answer a couple questions,

then you can actually start swiping on people once it starts matching you. And so then you have to actually go into their photos. You can see what they like, love, hate, all that shit. But yeah, so I found that. this guy who's like, I love the patriarchy and all lives matter and Donald Trump. And I was like, I have never rejected a man faster in my life than that man. Yeah, but it's been really great. But he found some like, you know, cheerleader.

Hang on. How does this happen like money? Unclear. It literally just launched. Okay. So it's collecting some like deeply personal information about you. So either it's going to be totally innocuous. And instead of swiping whether you love or hate, you know, Donald.

Trump, it's going to have you swiping whether you love and hate like egos. Yeah. Right. I mean, there is some stuff already in there like that. They have like, they know they're going to be able to do like targeted advertising to you in a way that like Facebook could never do. Finally, that targeted All Lives Matter advertises. I'm just saying. They do have other stuff. Like it has like if you like Tinder, if you like Twitter or Facebook, all that stuff is actually in there too. Interesting. So you just started using. Have you, have you gone on any physical dates yet? No, I will say that you have to actually try a lot harder than with like Tinder. So like that's just like, you're hot.

Let's go out. With this, it's more like you really have to sort through and be like, are you a terrible person? Can we actually talk? And then once you actually match with somebody, you can kind of play card games. So you can send them a card and it'll be like a random thing. So you can be like, oh, this card says, I love you like Kanye loves blank. And then they like choose from a list of what they want to say back. It's really cool.

But it's nice too because that way you're not opening every conversation with just like, hey. Yeah. Which is the worst? It's a literal dating mad libs? Pretty much, yeah. Okay. All right. Well, you got to report back when we're all done with it.

Oh, for sure. I'm going to find my future husband or life on there, so. Based on things you. I will say my relationship with my wife is mostly based on things that we hate together. What is the weirdest thing you guys both hate? It's a lot of things. I will say the thing that we both collectively hate, like the most together as a family, is people who are slow in a left-turn lane.

Like if you want to rile us both up instantly, it's that thing. It's like we're in the car. Slow in the left. Like they take the turn too slowly? Yeah, like the light clicks over and they don't go. And both of us are just like off to the races. We're like pulling handguns out of the center compartment. It's, I don't know.

It's like if you had to ask me what that, I mean, there's obviously a bunch of politics stuff and all that stuff. But if you had to just really drill it down to like how can you turn this couple in to psychopaths. It's that thing. What are you? Yeah, I don't know. We have nothing that strong. Well, you and Lisa hate proprietary platforms. We hate proprietary platforms. That's true. Yeah, as a family. That's so dorky. I mean, have you met that? It's really beautiful. It was just her anniversary, and Dieter posted a picture of him and Lisa. It was, I won't say it was posed, because I think it was very natural, but they're hugging. He's in his tuck, she's in her wedding dress, and they're looking at

phones over each other shoulders. I think I've actually seen this. It's very, it's like It's really cute, yeah, it's perfect. Happy anniversary, Lisa. Yeah, you're great. We both hate puke. I don't know, man. You hate puke? Everybody hates puke.

I don't know. This app would probably beg to differ because you can click and see. Someone's like, I love puke? I haven't gotten puke yet. I'm sure it's like. I don't mean like we hate puking. Like, Lisa hates that puke exists in the universe.

That's a thing that God allowed to happen at all. Huh. And I just don't like it very much. So we share that. I think can use me sometimes. deeply hilarious. And that's a good S&L vomit tube skit. It was gold.

You kidding me? Like there was that like two or three seasons where they're like, you know, we built these vomit tubes? What if every third sketch ended with like a guy holding his hand up to his mouth? All right, Megan, I know you got to run. You're going to go see Logan? I am, yeah. It's a thing you're going to do. And then you're going to come back and tell us all about it.

And judge it. It's going to be good. Yeah. I mean, I have high hopes. Please make it good. I've wanted to be good so bad. I'll do what I can. We'll see.

I do love Hugh Jackman for some reason. Who doesn't? His Twitter feed is the best. Really? Okay. He's unrelentingly happy, positive, and kind on his Twitter feed. Yeah. That's so sweet.

And then in the movie, he stabs people with his handswords. So that's a thing that he does. All right, go see the movie. Come back next week and tell us all about it. Okay. Bye. Hi. All right, Paul, every week you do a segment.

Yeah. What's it called, buddy? It's called Dieter wouldn't let me make a slurping noise for the name of this segment. That's true. McDonald's is coming out with a limited edition straw. You have to look up the stats on the straw. Well, I mean, I could explain it to you. Isn't it like just a curly?

Yeah, it's like it's got a swoop to it. And the basic idea is so, so imagine like an upside down, like imagine the letter J or an upside down. peppermint stick. Yeah. Right. I'm sorry. What? Imagine a Khammed to.

Imagine a hollow J. How did you learn the alphabet, man? There's a hole in the bottom, right? And that's probably where you're going to get the majority of the milkshake that you're drinking. But also, it snorkels up and there's, like, more holes because there's apparently a limited edition or like a secret menu item that's like mixes like multiple flavors at the same time. So this allows you to drink two flavors simultaneously. But here's what I, my problem is with Java chip frappuccino.

Oh my God. Or always get the Java chips stuck in the straw. And I think this could be a way possibly to improve on that. But there's just a limited round of them. Let me just ask you a question. Yeah. Does this count as a gadget? Yeah.

Okay. Why? I don't know. All right. Just define gadget. As long as we're clear that... I think, you know what? A lot of the stuff on the circuit breaker are clever solutions to problems.

I see. But they're not always serious problems. Right. And I feel like you can approach technology coverage with, you know what, I'm only going to cover things. They're for serious problems. But sometimes I like covering things that aren't necessary. Like J-Strape's straws. Yeah, for J-straps.

Yeah. We can't. You can't. It's not a phrase you can say it. Try it. The other thing. Wait, wait, wait. Everyone in your car and you're driving along.

Just try to say it. Say what? Jay shaped straws. Jay shaped straws. Jay shaped straws. Jay shaped straw. Yeah. I got that one.

That's good. All right, all right. The other thing I want to talk about there's a, so the toy fair is coming up. Oh, yeah. Love toy fair. And there's going to be a lot. Everything's for STEM. Everything is helping.

kids be so smart all the time. But there's this, a bell doll because there's a new Beauty and the Beast movie coming out. And she teaches you how to code. Into it. So you use the app and learn how to code

and by coding good, she'll dance. What? Yeah. And I thought this was really anachronistic because in the olden times when Beauty and the Beast is ostensibly set, even though it's a fantasy setting, They didn't have computers.

Yeah, but the teapot comes to life. Heim told me that to improve the women empowerment situation of beauty and the beast, she's going to be the real inventor in the movie. That makes sense. I like that. I'm into that. She's the mind, the great mind behind the invention. So that's cool.

Can you coat up a talking teapot and kind of like a saucy French chandelier thing? Probably. So here's my thing. Here's my thing with coding. J-shaped candelabra. Yeah. I don't think there's a talking chandelier in the movie. No, it's a candelabra.

Yeah, it's a candelabra. Yeah. The name is Lu mer. Kind of like looming. So, so this idea with coding apps, I think they're awesome. And I think that's a wonderful thing. I just want to, I feel maybe I've even talked about this before. Yeah.

Any app that teaches you the concepts of programming, but does not teach you how to actually make a website or an app. is good for the mind in the way that playing Scrabble is good for the mind or any sort of puzzle or, you know, it's good at, it's teaching the sort of logic paths that you do solve in programming. But I've noticed in my own journey that it's been very, very slow in learning the program is that some of the basic concepts are obviously very important and need to be learned, things like loops. and variables, objects and classes and stuff like that. But APIs are what are very difficult to learn. Yeah. So I'm going to try to write something about this. I've got to form all my thoughts about it.

But this is my new thing. Like we kind of are learning now how to teach kids about logic branches and loops and stuff like that. But how do you teach kids about how shitty it will be to read half done documentation? for core image service. No, but that's like, because that's so much programming is really about. I think it's right.

Isn't the goal more to teach kids like, if you make your brain work this way and understand the systems that are built on these core concepts, if you are then so inspired to pursue this career, you will have the foundational knowledge to understand it better. No, it's not like, it's that, sure.

But I think it's also like, play this game and you will get a small reward that will fire off your little pleasure synapses. And then your brain will be trained to enjoy doing this activity. And then you'll be more likely to want to do it for a job because you'll be addicted to code. I think what you will quickly learn in that career is that no one dances when you're done. That's right. They're like, it's buggy. Please fix it. The ads are too big.

That's all they're ever going to say to you. As a parent. So that was a scrum joke with like the... Yeah, I got you. User story. Uh-huh. User story. I got you.

But I forgot the other part of the user story. What the parent was. No, I like this thing. Look, I love this stuff. I think it's cool. We've got to get one. I want you to review more or learn-to-code gadgets. Yeah, I will.

Okay. I will. All right. All right. We got time for one more thing. Dieter, you interviewed the CEO of Sonas. That's why I wanted to talk to him. His name is Patrick Spence.

He had... been there a long time. And so when the former CEO was like, you know what, I'm done. It was like not a convulsive moment for the company. They're like, okay, well, we knew Patrick was going to do this anyway, so he came in and did it. And he used to be at Blackberry way back in the day. So I definitely had the moment where I, you know, he's like, I'm not worried about Alexa and Google Home because that just creates more interest in speakers and a rising tide, you know, lifts all boats. I was like, Huh. I've definitely heard that before from a company. That's what you say right before you die.

Right. The thing that I will say about Patrick Spence and about Sonos in general right now is when you talk to them, they are very, very smart. They are very good at understanding Homadio on the high end without turning into snobby assholes. and they also understand what's happening with Alexa very clearly. What gives you that impression in particular? Oh, just like, think about if you want to use Alexa to control a Sonos. What do you want to do out of Sonos?

You want to listen to Apple Music, or maybe Spotify. So you need to tell Alexa to tell the Sonos to tell Apple Music to play the music, which then needs to play on the Sonos in your living room, but not your bedroom. Yeah. Because Alexa doesn't talk to Apple Music. Right.

Right. So they need to build this intersection of services and apps and make it completely invisible to you. So you can say a thing to Alexa and not have to remember a million code words. And like I start explaining that kind of problem to him and he finishes my sentence. It's like he knows exactly what he needs to do. Right. He knows, you know, he was able to work with all of these different, you know, music streaming companies. Right.

and they all work with Sonos now. So, like, in terms of understanding the problem space and being smart about what the right solution ought to be, Sonos is very good at that. But they're bad at it as the shipping products. Yeah, so I have a bunch of Sonos stuff. They're bad at it is actually implementing those solutions. They don't, wait, they don't have the microrays they're going to need. It's great. They can buy an echo dot and make it work.

Well, so this is Sonos's problem is they fundamentally don't have any illusions that anybody's going to buy more than, like, one Sonos every four or five years once their house. is kit it out. Like, you're not going to replace your Sonos on the same cycle. You're going to replace your Alexa speaker or your smartphone. Or maybe even your TV. So they're actually kind of doomed because, well, not doomed, but like they're in a tough spot because they have a big install base that they want to continue to serve. There's an expectation that there's going to be software updates that will make the thing continue

to work. Like, do you remember the old, like, the first Sonos remote? Well, they're a profitable company. Do you remember that first Sonos remote? Yeah. The like big, chunky thing. I think about it all the time. Right?

I look at them on eBay all the time. Yeah. Well, if you bought a speaker with that thing, that speaker today works fine. Yeah. It like, well, lets you do your Apple music on it. You don't have that remote. You've got your phone now. They do a really good job of supporting existing products.

That's actually pretty impressive. But they, though that existing install base that they need to continue to support does not have far-field microphones in them. The, you know, I have a play bar. Well, this is a great time to get everybody to upgrade their speakers. You would think. So you have a play bar. I want to buy a play bar. Don't.

I mean, do, but don't. But it doesn't support DTS. It doesn't support DTS. It doesn't have Farfield microphones. Yeah. Like, why would I buy a play? And it's super expensive. Yeah.

So, like, just update that product to be minimally competitive. Yep. And I'll be happy. I don't think they're going to do it. Yeah. Or actually release the thing you're promising to release with Alexa, and I'll just buy a bunch of echo dots and stick them around my house. Yeah. Right?

I know. So, I mean, I, I, I, I mean, I, Again, I have Sonos in my house. It's great. I like using it. But I'm just waiting for them to finish this part of the puzzle. I did think the one thing he said in his interview, which was interesting, was every musician has Sonos in their house. Yeah.

So when they go to the streaming services, they're like, you have to have this because Jay-Z is literally name-checking us in his songs. Right. Well, this is like the fundamental thing that I just kept on pushing him on is he thinks that in a beautiful future world, Sonos speakers are going to allow you to walk up to it and say, Alexa, buy me a t-shirt, hey Google, buy me a whatever you buy from, hey Google. And the microphones will listen for both of those services, it'll listen for whatever the hell, whenever the hell Apple puts Siri out there.

Yeah. And all of the Apple and Amazon and Google are all going to be just pleased as punch to coexist on the same set of microphones all the time. Do you believe that Apple and Amazon? and Google are willing to, like, play ball with each other. That's a beautiful dream. I think once, I think Amazon is super happy. They're already in the game.

Amazon will do it. Amazon will do it. And I think once Amazon is sitting there and the Sonos, like, community is there. Yeah. Google's going to have to show up for the ride. Okay. And if Apple puts anything out, I think Apple executives have a bunch of sono speakers in their house. That's true. I think that's why Apple Music is there for them.

And I think they're going to say, well, we're not going to put out a bunch of distributed speakers and try to get Jimmy Iveen to like drive up with a truck to Drake's house and be like, I'm changing all your speakers out. Right. I think there's like a tipping point here for those kinds of services. Yeah. But the thing that Sonos... Can you imagine if Apple was like, screw Sonos for putting out the iPod Hi-Fi?

Yeah, right. I think people are happy with Sonos. And you're right. They are profitable. They don't want to get bought. They're doing, you know, presumably fine. I mean, this is the CEO talking. So, of course he's going to say that.

But like, here's the other thing with Sonos. knows. I have an Alexa speaker and a Google home speaker. And I have a play bar. And you would think when I come home, I should want to listen to music on the play bar. But I can't be bothered to deal with the interface. And so I just yell at the room, play some music and I play some music. And I'm doing most of my music listening now on a relatively shitty speaker. And life is fine. I should, I should get a play one and do the stuff and figure it out. But you know what? Whatever. And so, All of a sudden, there are a bunch of people filling their houses up with cheap speakers, and they're fine. And Sonos believes that they're going to want to step up and get a Sonos, like upgrade to Sonos someday. But you know what? I got a speaker at my house, listen to music on it, it's fine. That's like a real danger for them. Never bet against people being fine with 128 kilobytes per second MP3.

Exactly. That's exactly right. I'll make that bet. I won't. But I was going to say, come on. Let's talk about the ponos

that you listen to. Yeah. Tired. Right. It's Pono. Pono. No, you have more than one of them. Neilie.

You love music so much. You bought more than one Pono. Tell me about your ponos. I want to kill myself right now. Just come and take me. Just let this night begin. Turns out what? No, like so the overwhelming

push over, I would say, the past 20 years of music has been convenience over quality, right? The iPod and streaming services, I think there's a little bit of swing back, right? I think title, like Sonos users, they're all like, you should switch to title because uncompressed music sounds better over the service.

Yeah. Like you go on the Sonos forum. There's a lot of talk about how title works on. But if you really cared that much about sound, I feel like you wouldn't even be playing it through your Sonos. You know what often, what one of the number one electronic products on Amazon is? fucking turntables. It's really weird.

Like, people do that. Like, there's... I love good sound. But, like, everybody... This is the beginning of one of the worst infomercials. Like... I'm Paul Miller, and I love great sound. People who buy turnt...

Okay, sorry. People of a certain age and income that I happen to know who buy turntables by bad turntables or they plug them into bad speakers and they have scratched up records or it's like... It's never a better experience. I just feel like it's not about sound quality. Turn tables are not about sound quality. Paul's right. Light up some hot wax.

Paul's right. I believe you. There are sound. I don't even know if that's a phrase. There are audio files who... Do audio files say let's light up some hot wax? Absolutely. Because they should start.

And who care very much about sound and achieve very great listening experiences from vinyl. I'm just saying the hot market for vinyl is not that. It's urban outfitters. The only reason... Yeah, it totally is. and they're selling bad turntables, particularly the Croxley Cruiser or whatever. The damage records.

Yeah, because of the track. I think about this all the time. But all I'm saying, that data point is not about audio quality. It's about convenience. Right. People are picking less convenient things, which is interesting. That's true. So I just think, like, maybe there's a little bit there.

Like, you fill up your house with cheap speakers, and I don't know, you get a better job, do you get a promotion? You know, I want a nicer stereo. And like, sonuses are waiting. for you. Can I say one last thing? One last topic. I know we got to end. And then Pono's is there waiting for you in the car. Google can't make Android apps for big screens. I don't know what the problem is. Oh, you reviewed the Chromebook Pro Plus. I reviewed the Plus. I refused to review the pro. Because it was so buggy. Right. One of the harshest Dieter lines I've ever seen, by the way. This is the nightmare

before the dream. Yeah. I felt the venom coming out of you. That was bad. Yeah. That's also how I feel about But the plus is great. And the pro is good as long as you never let Android apps anywhere near it. It's not coming out until April. Actually, I have a lot of thoughts. Like, the processor on the Chromebook Plus is, like, incredibly fascinating. Do you want to go through it? I don't.

We'll do it later. We're out of time. It's a tease for next week. I don't think material design is well suited for a mouse interface. It's not a material design issue. It's not even a mouse interface issue. They could solve those problems. Those problems, like, Google would be lucky to have.

have those problems. Right now, they just have got a bunch of third-party apps and first-party apps from Google that are just designed for a phone and are awful on a big screen because they just get blown up. And not blown up and like, oh, it's fine, but blown up, but like the thing that's supposed to be like in portrait mode ends up in landscape mode, but all the interface pieces still assume it's in portrait mode. So like you've got like an email that goes all the way across the screen. That's my nightmare. What are they doing? I don't know. And that's even on top of, oh, we're not talking about that. It's even on top of the fact that, like, right now the Android apps are in beta so you can't resize the windows yet.

Like, I will forgive, the reason I didn't actually review the pro is Android on Chrome OS is still in beta so you can't do certain things like apps not crash or, you know, resize Windows. But this is there going to be their year. Yep. It's just not. We'll see you in April. If it's still bad in April, then it will be the nightmare before the nightmare. The nightmare before the bigger nightmare. It's just, I don't, they, I don't know.

I want them to succeed. Yep. Also, uh, but they just don't. Fuchsia is not Andromeda. Andromeda is not a thing. Stop it. But Fuchs is still really cool. Fuchs is cool.

That was for the few droid life readers out there who are listening to this podcast, Dieter just personally yelled at you. But stop it with Andromeda. You know, I got some, some guy on like Reddit or something. Stop it with Andromeda. I mean, I read droid life. I'm just saying. It's not droid life.

Who is it? Well, so it was a guy who, like, misunderstood the connection between Andromeda and Fuchsia and everybody like reblogged. Oh my God, he saw, he saw through the code. It's like, no, he didn't. Andromeda is not a thing. And the kernel of their building could theoretically run Android on top of it. Yes, this is true.

You could take the Linux out of Android. But you can't take the Android out of Linux. Sorry. It's a good one. It makes no sense at all. You could run. Yes. And that might happen.

But I don't think it's happening. happening. No, it's not a near-term thing at all. And it's not a, I mean, it's not a unifying project. But they're very much, they've got Flutter. Yep. So many exciting things. So many code names that aren't products that work. Interprocess communication. Oh, my God. I just want them to ship good products at work. I just want them to pull a Microsoft and back up a dump truck full of money at a bunch of app developers houses and say, hey, make these apps better on a big screen and assume that you have a real processor behind you know you can't pay for the love you need to make that work Microsoft found that out no one has ever pulled that off ever you have to the developer has to want to make the app you can't just pay him to do it think about it fine has anyone ever gotten that to work blackberry tried it Microsoft tried it but Microsoft you can tell yeah you can tell is that air of desperation in the app yeah yeah anyway I'd like to thank Crizal no glare lenses for sponsoring the show today if you wear glasses then you know the fingerprints smudges

scratches and glares can be constant obstruction to your vision and a huge distraction as you try to escape our inevitable doom. That's why you should wear Crizol and no glare lenses. They give you the clearest vision possible by offering resistance to glare, scratches, and fudges, which you will need because glasses will not be available in this our coming eternal night. So you won't be blinded by the glares of headlights from oncoming traffic as you wander down the highway, searching for food. There'll be no more fingerprints such as from taking glasses on our eyes scratching your lenses on your shirt. You'll look better, it'll fit better. Most apparently, you'll literally be prepared for whatever might come your way with clear vision, which you will need.

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That's our show. I apologize. I think all of us do to you, the listener, for that experience. Please tweet at Ajapai on... Tweet, Ajipai, A-J-I-T-P-A-I-F-C. Tell him to come on the show. We'll try to behave ourselves, have a reasoned conversation about net neutrality with him.

It's the thing that we very much want to do. So tweet at him, tweeted us. Paul is at Future Paul. I'm at Reckless, Dieter's at Backlon. Yes, I am. Love that stuff. You can follow at Verge on Twitter. You can follow Virge on Snapchat.

You can go on Instagram popping off lately. Check that out. It's good stuff. I'm just making clicking noises. You can listen to Control Out Delete, which is, I would say, at least a better organized show. There's at least one professional on it, and then I'm there. You can listen to Lauren Goods, too embarrassed to ask. Yep, a very good show.

Great show. She's got Joanna Stern coming on pretty soon. Hey, look at that. So at least one professional on that show, too. It's Lauren Good. There it is. Hey. Kara Swisher has Recode decode, which is great.

Peter Kafka has Recode Media, which is actually going to be replays of all his interviews from Code Media, so that'll be amazing this week. There's all just kind of stuff going on. iTunes.com slash The Verge, leave reviews for us. Just talk amongst yourself. Tell a friend. Maybe you don't play this episode, but a different, better episode for one of your friends this week.

Think about it. That's it. Goodbye. Paul. Rock and roll.