The Vergecast - Puddle of burn

Episode Date: June 26, 2015

Welcome to a very special episode of The Vergecast, featuring our new colleagues from Re/code, Walt Mossberg and Lauren Goode. They join Nilay and Sam to take a break from the news this week, and take stock of the state of the union in tech. From Amazon and Google to Microsoft and Beyonce, the crew takes stock of where we are, and what constitutes hype. Don't miss this one. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode of The Vergecast is brought to you by Linda.com, the online learning platform with over 3,000 on-demand video courses to help you strengthen your business, technology, and creative skills. For a free 10-day trial, visit Linda.com slash Vergecast. That's L-Y-N-D-A.com.com. That's Lydda.com is for problem solvers, for the curious, where people want to make things happen. Maybe you want to master Excel, maybe you want to learn some negotiation tactics, maybe you want to build a website. Maybe you just want to boost your Photoshop skills. Go to Linda.com and feed your curious mind. You can learn about virtually anything there. You can learn how to build a new stuff. a note-taking app for iOS 8. You can learn how to do a data visualization. You can do

better retina graphics with Photoshop and Illustrator. There's an entire course where you just learn how to get Sam Shephyr's haircut. It's kind of amazing. Linna.com will give you unlimited access to training on hundreds of topics all for one flat rate. So whether you're looking to just become an industry expert, you're passionate about a hobby, or you just want to learn something new, please visit Linda.com slash vergecast and sign up for a free 10-day trial. That's lyndea.com slash a verge cast. I want to say it took Mossberg four seconds to start trolling me on the air for this Vergecast.

Hello everybody and welcome to the Vergecast. What is today? Today is June 25th. It's a very special episode of the Vergecast. We are joined by our new colleagues. One, Mr. Walter Mossberg, who you're supposed to say hello. Oh, hello. There is.

And the delightful Miss Lauren Good. Hello, everybody. So Dieter, I've got just tabs playing audio everywhere. So Lauren and Walt are joining the Verge as part of the Box Media's acquisition of Recode, which is very exciting. Right. They're going to be around. They're in town this week to meet everyone. Literally, it's just been three days of introductions.

It's been awesome. Meetings. Endless meetings. We had a good dinner. We had a good dinner. We had a good dinner. Thanks to Eater. Yeah.

Our friends at Eater hooked us up. Yeah. And we thought we'd have them on the Vergecast this week. And then later on, I'm going to somehow. swindle Walt into doing a podcast of his own, and that's going great. And then over, what the hell are you doing? He's drinking distilled water. No, it's not to still.

I'm just reusing it. Chef is in a hype seat. Can I just call hype on the giant bottle of water? Yeah, so this is how, okay, you don't call hype. Here's how this works. Okay. It's very close to, God, what have I gotten myself into? So this is the Verge cast.

Let's start and start. This is the Verge cast where we discuss all things Verge for the week. Right. We usually stick to technology. We have formats where sometimes we get deep into entertainment. We get deep into culture. Liz will be on. We talk about science.

And then sometimes we have what we call hard tech verge cast where we just get really nerdy about technology. But the main format here is that basically it's chaos over here and Sam sits in the hype desk over there. And as we discuss various topics, you can ask Sam to hype check those topics. So we can, Sam, hype check the iPhone. It peaked a while ago. sound like a six or seven now like it's ubiquitous and the idea is for sam to provide a number but

that the formula usually some flavor there the formula that generates that number is subject to much discussion uh-huh because i think it should change over time i think the hype level of things of course changes over time you're totally right yeah so that's the first agreement i've gotten from all week so i feel really good about that so uh just for the audience we have been in meetings and literally just like introducing people and hanging out and seeing how things work. So we've been a little off of the news cycle. And these guys haven't been on the show before. So I thought what we might do is sort of introduce them everybody with kind of a state of the union and just talk about the big players and tech, what they're up to, how they're doing, you know, where their, where their,

where their hype levels are coming and going. You got to stop drinking out a two-liter or a two-gallon jug of water. No, one gallon. It's a one? That's one-gallon. Okay, well, it's still crazy what you're doing. Hipe check your jug of water. 10. So this, Walt and Lauren, is the verge cast. Peter Kafka is live watching. Oh, yeah, he's our biggest fan and he has already told us, Walt, that we need to speak into

the microphone. You guys need to be able to. Oh, really? Thanks, Peter. Thanks, Peter. Because, you know what, that's the first time Peter's ever told us to do something. I think it's the first time that Peter has watched a podcast streaming live. This is amazing.

Yeah, probably. So that's our show. No one lets him on them. Have you noticed that? Oh. It's just really interesting. you're in the hype seat next week, buddy. That would be great.

Peter lives in the hype seat. No, he lives in deep Brooklyn. Deep, just the shade throat at Brooklyn. He wrote, it's a long story. So the frame of this, we were talking just before the show started, is Eric Schmidt at Google

was at a conference with Walt, on stage with Walt, their conference. Was it D or the code? It was D. It was the D conference when it was in 2011. And he referred to it as the gang of four, which is Apple, Google,

Facebook, Amazon, right? Correct. Notably leaving out Microsoft. Right. And I said, why did you leave out Microsoft? And his answer was something on the order of they don't have a modern platform. And then he went on and make a point, which was, and I interpreted that as just

he's hated Microsoft since he ran Novell, which one person listening to this knows what novell is, but it was a networking enterprise kind of company, and he competed with Microsoft. But he left them out, and he had a rationale. And we had Microsoft on stage the next morning, and they fired back. It was Snowsky. It was Steven Snobski, who was an important executive there at the time, and had been for many years, and he was actually showing for the first time ever, I think Windows 8, which went out to, as you know, conquer the world. And what was the hype on Windows 8?

I mean, at the time, the fanboys were rabid for it. Right. And, yeah, people are looking forward to Windows 10 now. Let's just leave it that. Yeah, that's right. So, Sonowski made the point correctly, because Snobsky is a smart guy, a student of history, lived in China for a while, that the Ganga Fort was also a term that referred to the kind of click of dictators that ran China for a while.

Yeah. And so he was happy for Microsoft not to be in that. That was his point. But Eric actually, putting aside the Microsoft jealousy thing, he had an interesting point to make, which is still true today, I think, which is he claimed there had never been a time in tech history where you had, four companies that were platforms that were so powerful and growing so fast simultaneously and that it was just sort of an amazing time for developers and consumers of the products

they developed. And that was that was sort of the way his thought process was working on that. What I think is fascinating is how all-encompassing those platforms have become. Right. Now you can't literally everything. I wrote a piece last week, two weeks ago, where the entire media industry, the whole revenue of the media industry, or the music industry,

is less than Apple's profit over three quarters. And they're totally dependent on Apple's platform to succeed and be the gatekeeper of everything they do. And Google wants the same thing in a slightly different way. And Amazon wants the same thing in a slightly different way. Right. And Facebook is literally just subsuming the media industry into instant articles.

And it's amazing how big these platforms have become and Microsoft is trying to reinvent its platform with Windows 10. Yet again, the 15th time. Right. And I think the interesting thing is that all these guys and most of them are guys had a particular thing they were good at or that they sat at the center of their formula. You know, Google it was originally searched than Android. Apple it was and still is, I think, basically making,

hardware with software that kind of ties in vertically to the hardware. With Facebook, social, obviously. And with Amazon, it was selling things. But they're actually all now impinging on

each other. Right. Like, you know, you could draw these Venn diagrams and show all the overlaps of all this stuff. So it's like a giant four-sided or including Microsoft, a five-sided war. Yeah, I think we should include

because Microsoft's on the cut. We're actually talking about W. Of course it's really more. They're on that cost for trying in. But I think if we're doing this a year ago when Windows 8 was like in full throat, I would say maybe you could leave them out. Like that didn't work. No, I wouldn't have laid. Look, there's still hundreds of millions of

PCs running Windows and that's what they do every day. So that is the legitimate platform that a lot of things, a lot of work, a lot of browsing and other things is done on every day all around the world, right, Lauren? Yeah. Yeah, so let's get into it.

And I'll just ask Lauren. So we're in an Apple moment right now. I'm just going to go on the list, Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft. Okay. Let's do State of the Union and all of them. Somewhere in there, I'm going to read some ads. And why do you think we're in an Apple moment right now? Just because of the biggest?

Well, they're huge. They're about to roll at Apple music, right? They showed off the next versions of all of their platforms, OS10, iOS 9. The iPhone continues to be a monster. They got Taylor Swift to put her album on Apple. You know, like they have the cultural weight that I don't think anybody else has. And I think when Google, you know, we look at, I look at it, when Google had I.O. A couple weeks ago, there wasn't just the wall-to-wall saturation of Google.

Like, we did it on our side because we cover Google. but the rest of the world wasn't like paying attention to Google. Apple is like has one little tweet with Taylor Swift and like the world explodes. Right. And I think that moment is still very strong. So tell me, what do you think is going on with Apple right now? Well, Apple music specifically. I mean, there's so much Apple Watch.

I mean, what part of this we're talking about? So the watch, I think, is like fascinating. Please stop talking about the watch. You're not wearing one right now. I'm actually not. Walt's wearing one. And I've noticed a bunch of people at the verge actually are wearing theirs as well. but I'm testing something different right now. And yeah, I mean, it is definitely a moment for Apple, right?

I mean, they revolutionize the way that everybody pays for, consumes music over a decade ago now. They're now trying to do it again. They're sort of, you know, they've taken this wait and see approach. Everyone now knows that streaming music is a thing, right? And so I think, you know, this is going to be a really pivotal moment for them in terms of their music services. and actually what happens to iTunes as it exists now, just like they're doing with music, they took a wait and see approach with wearables,

and now they've just come in with a smart watch. But, you know, I think the response to Apple Watch has been a little bit mixed, actually. I mean, I think the early reviews were all sort of like polite and acknowledging it as a beautifully designed piece of hardware. Of course, like, you know, because we reviewed it right off, and then Walt reviewed it early on as well.

There weren't third-party apps at the time, so we couldn't really judge it. it, you know, totally accurately or entirely at the time. But now, like, even we've seen lots of apps come out and people are still like, yeah, you know, we're still gauging the value of this thing. So it's definitely an Apple moment, but it's like there's still so much wait and see. And we hate saying that as journalists. Like, we just, well, time will tell, but that's sort of what's going on right now.

So I think, I think you're right. But I would remind you that if we could. getting a time machine and go back to two months into the iPod, the iPhone. If you look at the reviews, the iPad got weird, bad reviews in the beginning, like no one's going to buy this. And it became the fastest selling piece of consumer electronics ever, even faster than the PC. I actually think the bad iPad reviews and people getting those wrong is the best thing that could have possibly happened to Apple Watch.

Because I don't, I thought everybody was wrong. Those bad reviews about the iPad were wrong, like off the bat. So. But I think the mixed reviews of the watch are dead on. Yes, of course they should be. But everyone's afraid to like really say it because they might be as wrong as they were on. No, but, Nelai, they should be mixed because the whole package isn't out there yet. I agree.

Well, because they just. Thank you. Gen 1. Thank you. First of all, the hardware is Gen 1, but it isn't that. The hardware is fine for Gen 1. Yeah. It's they just, as you know, very well, they just released what you might call the first real SDK for it.

Right. Where a third-party developer can write to the watch as a device. I mean, what I said in my piece, which was based on wearing it for a month, was that I had the feeling. And I did have some apps to talk about that were finished. But there were these apps that, you know, basically are little stubs of iPhone apps. because they weren't allowed to write directly the watch. And so I wrote,

it just feels like a lot of the developers don't know what to make of the shit. That's not going to be true in the fall. And we all... So why do they rush it out? Oh, to our... I don't think they rushed it out. They took years to do it.

The question is, why did they do it in these two stages? Yeah. Because it was probably faster to get a bunch of apps out through the iPhone. It may have been a mistake. Who knows?

Well, there's also a learning curve with these types of devices, right? Like, I was just talking to the Fitbit CEO yesterday, and we ran a story about that on Recode. And even he pointed out, and they've been around for eight years, we're still in very early stages of consumer awareness around these types of products, too. So on the flip side of that, I guess, is if Apple had rolled everything out and saying, like, okay, and here are a thousand apps you can run immediately on this watch.

And, you know, a lot of the app load experiences have been really slow. Or in some cases, you're swiping and you're like, well, what does this do here? It could have been too overwhelming for a certain segment of the market. Apple is, Apple, you got to remember two things about Apple. and it goes through all these products. And one is they, you guys mentioned this, but this is a truism with Apple. They always wait. They always wait to see what people are pummeling around in a category.

They decide it's interesting to them and they figure out, can we do this better or more holistically or whatever? And then they try. And that's what's going on there. And then they usually really succeed and dominate the market. They do. They have historically. Secondly, Apple plays the long game.

And they can afford to. But to be fair, when Jobs did not have this kind of money, he still played the long game. I mean, I had lots of conversations with him over the years. I can't ever remember I'm talking about quarterly earnings. It just couldn't have mattered less to him. He never went on the analyst's phone calls. I think he did once.

He did once to burn Android tablets to the ground. Right, but the point is basically he didn't care. So, I mean, I did see him super excited one time when the sales of one of the Pixar, the box office for one of the Pixar movies came in because he was so happy about it. So they're in it for the long game. If you look at the iPhone, it was dead in the water for the first three or four months. I mean, dead in the water. And they had to cut the price.

He had to cut the price and he had to cut the price again. And it did not, if you looked at the sales chart on that, it did not, there was eventually kind of a hockey stick thing. But it was like a year. It was like after they had opened an app store and all that other stuff. Same with the iPod. And so it's way too early. The reason I have a watch is it's a platform device from the company that as the hype desk has just declared, has eventually succeeded in all these things. How have I brought these two people together?

It will, it will, it will, it either is going to be a huge flop or it's going to actually become a platform where people are going to do stuff. Let's talk about Apple music. There's like, there's so much Apple. That's what I mean by it's a moment. Okay. We can do the whole show on the watch. We can do the whole show on music. I feel like Taylor Swift's next album should be called Apple Moments.

Oh my goodness. Tatea, you heard it here. Yeah. I checked Tyler Swift. She's queen of the hype. She is. She really is. Go through music.

We talk about Apple Music on the show, I think, every single week. It's been like two months. It's been dominating what we talk. Because it's such an important thing. It is. And then Spotify. It's music in general right now is upside down. Emily and I were having a conversation for the past year, year and a half.

All we've talked about in terms of entertainment and technology has been television. Over and over again, we talk about TV. Are they going to get the deals? We're going to make a TV. What's Netflix going to do? Amazon's making shows. And I just sort of figured it's, out. And now we're just moving on. We're going to, okay, let's reinvent music again.

And all we talk about when we talk about technology and culture right now is music. And it's just strange. It just flipped like that. Like we just stopped talking about television in the way that we did for the past 18 months. So you're saying this is all just one big head fake. No, I'm, maybe Apple's, they're finally going to do a TV. Or you're really interested in music. No, that could be. I just think that the TV stuff has. proven to be so hard for so long. Yeah. No, you're right. You're right.

That it has slowly sort of sorted itself on. I mean, we were actually talking about this in one of our meetings this week, how there are a lot of smart TVs, but people are still hooking Roku's and Apple TVs. They're still using over the top solutions. Here's one thing I find really interesting about Apple Music, which, by the way, they did an uncharacteristically terrible job of presenting as you wrote and other people were. The opposite of simplicity that they... And I personally, I mean, I think it's because they have... This is part of their effort to integrate beats into Apple, which are different cultures.

I mean... I was thinking about what you said, actually. Go through it, because it's really interesting. Well, it has a perspective. So Jimmy Ivine and Dr. Dre who, you know, created beats and ran beats and got $3 billion for it from Tim Cook. which for Tim Cook is couch cushion change, right? Nothing. He came out on stage.

He had a lot to do with, I think, the design of Apple Music. And I happen to like him a lot. Yeah, I think he's great. He's a great guy, but he's a record industry guy. He happens to have almost a purity of vision about music. He cares. He really does care about human curation. Since that's an Apple thing also, there is a fit there.

But in terms of him coming out and doing a presentation with Eddie Q, who has become his pal, it just was very muddy. It was very unclear what they're doing. And it's really not unclear when you break it down, but the way they presented it was unfair. I remember people were leaving and saying, oh, so beats one is now the new iTunes radio, but it's actually Apple Music Radio and Beets One is a channel within that. Yeah, iTunes Radio is staying the same with a different name. It's algorithmic radio. and beats one is an old-fashioned. It might as well be 1957, except that it's global.

And it's a linear radio station. It's so weird. Which focuses on the taste of the DG's. Yeah, but I'm not so sure. I'm no expert on this, but I'm not so sure that millennials won't find that interesting. I don't know. Even just the idea of multiple people tuning into the same stream and hearing the same thing. Right, right.

Or they may find it drives them crazy. Well, we have a millennial here for a reason. I think this is going to be one of the most compelling things about Apple Music. I think even, like, my generation, we are all so connected. You know, we have WhatsApp and FaceTime. You can just, you press a bun and you're talking to someone on the other side of the world. You're talking about the greatest generation, your generation. That's debatable.

Definitely debatable. You won World War II, right? We could do an entire show of Walt and Santrolling each other. Let's be really clear. I think that it's going to be really special where, you know, you can be listening to the same music as someone that's in a different time zone or literally on the other side of the world. Yeah. And it's Apple and everyone knows Apple. And yeah, I think it's going to be cool.

It's Apple and everyone knows Apple explains a lot of things. Yeah. It explains a lot of things. But my question is also around human curation, not just the idea of the linear terrestrial style radio being. streamed, but do people really care about human curation when it comes to streaming music? Do you think you listen to a playlist? And you're like, this was made by a human instead of a bot. Well, those humans are icons also, like, arguably known around the world, too.

In the case of Apple music, but I guess for streaming in general, do you think people care about curation? Well, Emily, did you see Emily tweeted a picture of, like, Beyonce's, like, festival hits playlist on title yesterday? And it's just so bad. It's just like, was just Beyonce? Did she do this? Did a robot do this?

Did like, where did this come from? Nothing against Beyonce personally, but I mean, that's a gimmick. That's a gimmick. That's a celebrity. But the point is when Jimmy and Dre and Ian Rogers, who most people don't know who he is, but he's been in the music business a long time, the digital music business, and he's a very smart guy. When they started beats music, and the DNA of beats music is in Apple, music clearly even even some of the UI is in there their idea was not to get celebrities they did

they do have some but that was not their idea their idea was to get the the best country music magazine i can't remember the name of it what is it does anybody here know no or if it's rock if it's if it's rock and roll country music is the last music in the world to have actual guitars in it and i keep trying to get into it because i like want to listen to guitars on and then it's awful. And then this is like a monthly cycle with me. Anyway. So whatever that is, they had them curate a bunch of playlists.

They had Rolling Stone curate rock and roll playlist. But Spotify has a speech. They did it. They did it first. And Spotify then also did it. And, you know, maybe it'll all work out that it's all the same. No, remember when Spotify launched apps? this is like a crazy idea they had

launched apps inside of the desktop and the one app that was awesome and remains awesome but nobody it's rarely updated anymore is the pitchfork app okay but pitchfork is in was in beats and it's in I haven't checked but I'll bet it's in Apple music where you can read pitchfork and listen

no no no no you can't read it right so in the Spotify desktop app you used to be able to read pitchfork and it would play the songs of the music that you were I really think that's sort of not compelling but that's like that's my Sunday afternoon with an iPad. I actually really like to do that when I'm listening to Spotify in the car. Right. I'm just kidding. You can't read what.

Right over his head. I mean, you know what? Coming from Recode, I think we have to lower it a little bit. Wow. Wow. I don't know what is happening here. This show is over. What do you guys think about the price of Apple Music? What, $10 a month? Oh, I want to bring this up. Yeah. Yeah. Because here is the I completely lost control of the show. Not just the price that you're going to pay,

but the model of it, I mean, how, like, Mossberg has a theory that we've talked about. So here's the theory. It's more than a theory. Confirmation. I know it's more than a theory because. You've let the insane take over the asylum. I'm really excited, right? This shows you're getting boring, and now it's going to get excited.

And then there's going to be blood. It's going to be wild. Because our friend, Peter Kafka, who knows everyone in the music industry, you know, wrote for a while about this, and we'll continue to write about it. So basically what's happening. for those of you out there who just want to listen to music and didn't really care or are confused about why is Apple finally doing this when they wouldn't do it when Steve Jobs is live and whatever. What's really going on is the labels who were saved once by Apple when they started iTunes, the labels hate Spotify because there's no money essentially. It might as well be no money made from the ad-supported free tier of.

Spotify. So what they want is everything to be a subscription. They don't mind a trial period, but basically they want a subscription. So they went to Apple. And Apple also at the same time, iTunes sales began plummeting, so they needed to do something different. So there was a mutuality of interest there. But I am, I know for a fact that there were discussions about, okay, if we want to get everybody to subscribe and we want to defeat the free streaming, ad-supported streaming music, which, by the way, not just the sort of, you know, evil titans of the music industry, but even the artists and the songwriters all hate that because so little money is generated from it. My curious, or my question is, why didn't they let Apple charge less than Spotify? Right. Less than 10 bucks.

And they actually had serious conversations about it. They had conversations about $6, $7, $8, whatever number of... Just as a differentiator and everything else. Well, just to kill Spotify. To achieve their goals, Apple's goals, but also the industry's goals. How would they achieve their goals if they're charging less? Because they would get more people... Because it would still be better than the ad base.

They would get people behind paywalls. Let's ask our resident millennial. By the way, I'm on the customer. so I'm with you here in terms of millennialism. Sort of. Millennialism is a world philosophy. But does it matter to you if you're paying $8 a month for your favorite streaming service or $10 a month? It's negligible.

Right. And so what ultimately is going to be the driving factor for you? And whoever has tool on streaming music, because I have yet to find a streaming service that has tool. Right. It's the one. I mean, whoever has the most music. So if somebody had tool, they could charge you $15 and it would be all right. What I pay premium for tool, maybe. My point is that the catalog needs to go deep.

Well, no. No, but the catalog is the same. But Apple's catalog does need to go deep because they're, and everyone's going to tweet at me about Google Music. This is what happens. Yes. But Apple's catalog does need to go deep because you can just buy the tool record and then you'll have it.

It'll be over, right? I mean. Yeah. Mossberg's checking his Apple Watch. I know. But there's a reason. excitedly showed me a, what I did. Peter Kafka, who's listening to this.

Pinging the Apple. Those who don't know, Peter Kafka. This is a first on the, oh, we talk about Kafka all the time. So Peter just tweeted that, in fact, Apple wanted five bucks and thought at one point they had settled a date. Yeah. And he had a link because, of course, he wrote about it. Of course. Lauren, to answer your question, I'm going, I pay, I've been paying for Spotify since the day came out in the U.S.

And when, on June 30th, I'm going to sign up for an Apple music subscription. and after a month, a month and a half, whichever one serves me better, I'm going to pick that one. But by serves you better, that's purely based on the catalog. It's not about the UI, the experience. It's about the UI and the experience.

Like Spotify, there was one version of Spotify that I was able to tap the icon and it would be up in like two seconds now. There's like a six to eight second buffer. And if I miss that when I have service and I hop onto the subway, like it sucks. It's over.

Sam and I also argue on the show every week about. About Spotify. I think Spotify's garbage. A bad user interface. See? I don't like that it takes here. I don't know. I don't know if it's a podcast.

I don't know if it's bad. It's usable. And let me just say, I've interviewed. Danielek. I like Danielek. I like music. I like the idea of streaming music. I think you could put a little more effort into making a good interphrase.

I agree. We'll see what Apple is, Apple's interface is really like. Well, Virchcast again in a month and we'll revisit this conversation. I mean, I think Spotify's you guys garbage. Like, it's not. good. I use it. It's the one I use the most. Do you use Google Play All Access? It's just the tweets and the tweet of the angry email. Like yeah. About Google Play specifically. Yeah, because we there's, we have a lot of listeners to use it and I have it. I pay for that one too.

The thing I use that one for the most is it doesn't, I don't have to watch ads on YouTube when I watch music videos on YouTube. That's great. That is an excellent reason to pay for that service. Their apps on the iPhone are garbage. Like they're not good. And their app on Android is a little bit. crashy. Like, none of these things are good. And the reason I have been, these listeners have heard this for me so many times, I'm excited for apples because I think they write the best software sometimes. Yeah.

Yeah. Not all the time. Not all the time, but they have a history of writing great software and because they compare it with their hardware. But one of the things that Walt said to me, which was like mind blowing, because it had never occurred to me to think about anything this way, was he said, well, look, you're trying to integrate recode, this recode group into the, the verge and you're taking it slow and you're being respectful of everybody's feelings.

That's what Apple is doing with beats. So they're letting the beats people do the stuff their way because Tim Cook knows, he said, Tim Cook knows what he doesn't know when he's letting Jimmy and Dre like do the beats thing. And I'm thinking that's why this sucks. Like what I'm looking at is a product that is a series of compromises. Yeah. But you don't actually know it sucks yet because you haven't lived with it. It just feels like a lot.

It feels. Having artists connect, having the radio, but then also a flagship channel within the radio, and then people's iTunes also being integrated directly into the streaming services. It lacks focus. It lacks focus. But it could be awesome. It could be one of those things where you say, yes, aside for maybe artists connect. Like I see where this all makes sense once we start using it, which we haven't started doing it.

I'm with Lauren on this. I don't mean to be clear. I don't mean the product sucks. I mean the keynote, the messy. Yes. Oh, that was right. We all agree on that. You wrote a nice piece saying it sucked.

I get it. But in this integration here, but it's about the product. I've checked Neli right now because it's like a zero. It's dropping magnet. We're approaching dangerous levels. Help.

Walt is taking over. You're in a puddle of burn here. It's not. It's not a puddle of burn. Okay. Can we talk about what Apple puddle of burn, I believe, is our episode title?

Let's talk about what Apple is bad at. Yeah. Now, don't say cloud-connected services because that's just bullshit. Whatever, whenever, whenever, someone wants to knock Apple, they're like, they can't do cloud services. And it's like, yes, they can. I wrote a VO script

on my Mac on text edit, and I just popped it up right on my iPhone. Boom. Interconnectivity. Super quick. Okay. I'll say one thing that I'm... What you guys, what the audio listener is not experiencing right now is just a Walt just staring at Sam. Like Sam

descended from the sky on like a plane marked like idiot jet. Sorry, we'll continue. Apple needs to get a lot better at cloud services. And it has to get better at that for people that can't write a VO script. Right? It has to, you know, whether it's ICloud file drive, is that what they call it?

Or ICloud Drive. I don't know. Whether it's the fact that it took them months to get my music right on Match, they still haven't finished uploading my photos. to iCloud photo library i had 30,000 but they have a lot of people with much bigger libraries than that they they are not as good and that's and i personally i also think that's why their maps thing uh wasn't what it should have been um part of that is i i like their stance on privacy and on on device things but it does cut them off from some tools that google can use even while it's

So that's a good, we should, we have five of these to get through. Yeah. We've done a lot. Anyway, that's their, so we talked about their strength. And that, to me, that's their weakness. And so this is an excellent transition, I think, into Google, Facebook, Amazon. Right. Because those are all, their platforms are all in the cloud, right?

Like, Google has Android as its one hardware, hardware software. They don't make, they don't make, actually. Even the Nexus stuff they don't make, as you know. Right, but it's the one tangible expression of their software running on a local device is Android. Maybe it's somebody else's device. That was a beautiful way to describe that. Thank you. I'm not going to show you my poetry.

Your enjoyed poetry. What? That was great. Real MFA workshop. I think that was Lauren's way of asking for a 10% raise. Yeah, that was Lauren's way of trying to build my ego up after it's been thoroughly decimated. No, okay. Lauren, we'll start with you again.

Tell us about Google. What's going on? What's good? What's bad? What's going on with Google? Oh, God. but I honestly don't even know what to start. Pick an area and we'll go with that.

Phones. Okay. Well, I mean, I think, you know, Google is, Android is very much the dominant platform in a variety of markets, and that strategy has clearly worked for Google. I use an Android phone fairly regularly because I have to as part of my job, but I have to say, like, the platform I most go to is my iPhone and iOS and that sort of thing. What else? I mean, I think it's interesting what Google has done to an extent with Nexus trying to introduce that into the market. I don't know, like, I kind of don't know what to say, but I don't have anything really.

I don't have serious insights right now about. I think my iPhone is a vessel for Google services. That's what I use it for. I buy an iPhone and I load up the Gmail app and I use Google Search and Google Photos is wonderful. It's just funny. Like my, and it's, again, it's, I work at a company. We all work now at a company that it runs in Google services. So that is very, that connects a lot of threads.

And I think maybe if you work at an outlook shop or something, like it's not quite as dominant. But I literally, my iPhone runs, provides me a window into Google. Yes. A Google life all the time. Gmail, yeah, Google Docs, Gmail, search, everything, everything on Google. I think Google has done a really great job with Google now. It's virtual assistant. I think right now, like there's a lot of talk of virtual assistant.

with Apple claiming that series getting much better. And obviously we're going to see new iterations of Cortana with Windows 10. Oh, there was Alexa news today. And then there's Alexa news today from Amazon. And everyone's like, this is becoming a very hot area. And I think that Google has done a really great job with Google now. But Apple will, of course, argue that the way that they're approaching things in terms of all the information being local to the device is much more private than maybe Google's approach.

Well, let me ask this privacy. I think it's all a hedge on Apple's part. Because you think they're not as good. Because they're not as good. I think they got caught. I think it could be it to an extent. Like looking in the wrong direction. I think it's partly a hedge.

Yeah. I get what you're saying. But I honestly believe they deeply believe it. Yeah. I agree with you. It comes from Steve and it's still there. And if Tim Cook would, Tim Cook has taken the lead in, you know,

even challenging the government over encryption, this phone, this, I'm holding up for those who are not watching. I'm holding up an iPhone, which is pretty common, but it's encrypted, right? Google has said it's going to encrypt it, or maybe they have an option in the phone in the latest version of Android to encrypt it, but it's not the same thing. Apple's a hardware company. They just decided to go and encrypt the phone, you know, and they did. I think Google obviously has won the war over the share of smartphones. They have.

They are so far losing the war over the profits made with smartphones, but they're not a handset maker. That doesn't matter to them. But there is a big threat to Google. There's two, in my opinion. One is they're spread very thin, and that's why Larry Page has begun to pair back a bunch of their products that aren't generating, either generating revenue, or he doesn't think they're leading or they're not interesting or whatever. And secondly, and this is the bigger threat by far, is the open source, the conflict between wanting to get Google services on Android. That's how they make money, right? Android is free, but you get this big Google search bar, and you get Google Maps, and you get Gmail, and you get all these things.

And they then can collect information on you, target ads, place ads, all that stuff. They're an advertising, the advertising company in the sense of, that's how they make their money. But a rising share, over 20%, the last time I checked on this, of Android distribution in the world, has no Google services on it. It's open source Android. I mean, the example most Americans know about is the Amazon devices, but it is extraordinarily common in China.

It's extraordinarily common in other parts of Asia. They're trying to fight back with a thing called Android 1, which they say allows for sub-100. dollar devices, but Ena Fried, our colleague at Rico, just wrote a story about how they've struggled quite a lot with that. Or maybe, well, maybe it was Mark Bergen. One of them wrote.

I think it was Mark. It was about the one plus in emerging markets. But the point is, that's a huge threat to Google, is that ironically, the growth of Android without Google. Right. So why? Why can't Google

just manufacture their own iPhone? their own iPhone their own flagship their own flagship yeah they could they could I think Andy Rubin

who invented Android and who whose company got bought and who ran the Android group there for a long

while before Sundar which I took over Andy Andy Andy liked the idea of hardware you will remember

the famous incident of the thing called the queue which was a home entertainment device

yeah we had on our office and we literally use it as a doorstop. Yeah, it was amazing. It was very heavy. It was super effective doorstop. They were very, they made it in the U.S.

Right, in Texas. It was made of high quality materials, all this stuff, and they never put it on the market. You know, I think Andy had some tendencies to liking the idea of, at least the idea of hardware. But you don't have the margins in hardware that you do in software or in advertising. But it's not like Google's broke at all. Yeah. Yeah, Google could do it, but just like it's not as easy as people think for Apple to do the kind of job online that Google does, it's not as easy as people think for Google to do the kind of job that Apple does with hardware. People, just like humans, companies have things they're really good at and things they're not as good at.

And, you know, they could go to Foxcon. They could buy Motorola. They could buy Motorola. They could buy Motorola. Actually, they did a phone. They did many phones. No, but they did a phone that was intended to take on the iPhone and the Galaxy, the MotoX. That was...

But it's not the Google. You can shrug, but, you know, Google owned that company. Google helped Motorola immensely. There were Google engineers all over Motorola during that period. I just don't think they were punching as high as they could be punching. right if they're going to do it just do it and do it right this is the google phone that you've I think what Sam I completely agree with you but we've been saying with that with Microsoft and laptops for 10 years too it's like it's like it I think it was what Wald is saying is it's not as it's not that easy

and faced with the choice between we're going to piss off Samsung and they're going to continue 14 Android and they're the hardware maker that has the better carrier relationships and the distribution they're the only Android maker that is global and profitable although the less and less profitable. But I'm saying when Google had that choice between we can do this on our own and we can learn how to do it or we can give up and let Samsung do it and Samsung will play nicer with us, they just like offloaded motor oil. So then that begs the question, what is the next Nexus phone? Are we going to see a Nexus phone this, you know, this year? What does the Nexus program even mean to Google right now?

Well, there have been rumors they're going to drop it. I think they've denied them, so I assume they'll still do it. Naturally. But the Nexus phone is a, as we all know, is sort of a reference design. Right. It's like an enthusiast device. It's the Android phone I choose. Right. And it's the Android phone most people would choose. Most people in tech. It's actually a

nice phone. It's enormous. Would you have a Nexus 6? Do you have an Android phone to you? Or do you swap? I have a Nexus 6. Excuse me, a Nexus 6 loner at home. And I have a Nexus 4. I think that was given to us. And so in some code conference swag bag. Have you bought a Nexus phone?

No, I haven't bought it. But, I mean, I appreciate having unlocked phones around. I'm the proud owner of a Nexus 5, but I thought the Nexus 5 is my favorite phone. Nexus 6 was a little big for me. If the Nexus 5 had a not garbage camera, I would probably use that as my main phone. We've talked about this a lot too, like when you did your review of the Asus Xenphone 2 last week for recode.

And this idea that there's always going to be, you know, the premium for the iPhone, the Samsung Galaxy S6 or Samsung Galaxy note that people like aspire to. They're sort of aspirational devices, right? But you go to other countries and you see that like not everyone can afford those types of phones. and there are a lot of handset makers now that are coming in at the low end of the market, making actually pretty decent phones, and it's really starting to put pressure on things. And I look at the Nexus 6 as something like that.

No, the Nexus 6 is expensive. It's not as inexpensive. It's roughly the price of an iPhone. Right. But you look at different devices like that. And I think they're starting to put some pressure on. So anyway, to me, the danger for Google is they might be losing control of Android. Let's just say that.

They might be losing control of Android. And they would say, well, we never controlled Android. But they do. They give you a contract, and it's supposed to be about faster updates and not forking and all that's great. But it also has in it you have to use these Google services. You can't just pick and choose. You have to use this whole suite of Google services. This search bar has to appear on this home screen.

Finally, once in my life I can say that was my scoop. instead of a recode school. I was the first person to publish that point. That's fantastic. What do you guys think of Android Wear? Who wants to stand up? He's like, good scoop, you know. I've got to actually stand up now to watch.

No. I'm waiting for Kafka to text me and tell me that what, that they had it first. But anyway, the point is, so that to me. That's your Google? That's the Google. What about the rest of the Google suite? Because we need, we should go to Facebook and Amazon. Because I think Amazon is really interesting because I think everyone thought,

they were going to be a big platform company. They were in that gang. And then the fire stuff, at least in my estimation, has flopped. But I think Facebook is very... But let's go through Amazon because we can do that pretty quickly. Yeah. Okay. So Amazon is obviously enormously successful in two very important vectors.

One is commerce. I mean, there's a lot of other commerce companies, some of which are doing very nicely, But Amazon is still like the gorilla there and they continue to innovate. They disrupt themselves, which is the key to everything, I think, and if you're going to be successful. But Amazon, I think, in the device area, which, to be honest, they don't even need, but they just do it. They have the Kindle E-Inc readers. Which Dieter, Dieter Bonn just called. Dieter just did a review on it.

The Kindle Paperwhite. My wife has an iPad but she just walks around with a Kindle and she loves it and she's a voracious reader. Does she have a surface? Just kidding.

I have a surface. That's how you end. That's how Walt. I have a surface. You have a surface? Do you use it? We'll get there. But my point about Amazon is, okay, so there's the

Ian Kindle readers. Everything else they've tried, even though they don't ever announce sales. Yeah. I mean, we know the fire was... The phone. The fire phone was a flame out. But I think the fire tablets...

That was pretty good. Have sold. I stole that from you. I think that was in your headline. Yeah, we had a headline. I think the fire tablets have been... If this was Apple and Apple was reporting numbers the way Apple does, which is pretty transparent, they would be terrible numbers.

Yeah. I don't think the fire... tablets could be considered a big success. What about the Echo? While we're talking about devices. The Echo is a fascinating device, but it's brand new, and we just don't know. So I love the Echo. I bought one a couple weeks ago.

I think it's great. And I think it will die as soon as Apple builds that feature into a speaker or lets other speaker manufacturers tie it into an Apple TV. You know what I mean? Like Apple's got this home kit thing happening. So the idea that you would buy an Apple TV and would sit there and be the brains of Apple. You don't even need it, actually. They have a new...

That Alexa would be the brains of an Apple? No, no, no, no, no. I'm saying Alexa's great. He said he loved it, and the next clause he said it's going to be dead. Yeah, I love it. The idea is so good, right? And then Apple, and then Amazon's ecosystem is so limited that you can just see how Apple can swoop in and take the idea.

But that's assuming that they got the virtual assistant, the artificial intelligence part, right? Too, because part of the appeal of the Echo is this Alexa, an artificial intelligence software. Yeah, but it actually doesn't do that much. It is just that it is there and it is so much easier to talk to a computer for some things than

type it a computer. Right, but what you're saying that part, I mean, so it's a piece of hardware. It looks kind of, it's like an elongated speaker essentially. And anybody can do that. The talking to it part that you'd enjoy is the artificial intelligence. Right, but I'm saying, like, Google

could do it too. The the back end assistant part is commodity smart. It's like Alexa's table stakes stable stakes. Right?

You can ask her the weather. You can tell her to play some music. But it's not really, it's not a giant leap. Google Now, right? Where Google Now is like Alexa never wakes up and says, get the hell out of here.

You're going to miss your flight the way Google now could do. But what is amazing is having a speaker that's sitting there always. You don't have to push a button on your phone. And I just say, Alexa, what's the weather?

Like every morning now? By habit. I just want to speak to this. I think this would make a great, like, holiday gift for normals. The same way that I feel like Roku is so successful because a lot of normal, and I say normals, it's like, you guys know what normals. It's like not us, not people like us that do this for a living. But, like, you go to Amazon.com, you see an ad for the Echo,

and then you like Google Echo and, you know, watch some videos and read some reviews. It's like, holy crap, I had no idea this thing existed. It's price to the right number. What is it? 200? It's 1709 if you have a prime. So, no, but my point is Apple, Apple, make a Siri Echo.

Right. I don't think they won't. Or, but, or, and I think this is the move, because basically Amazon announced this today, right, that other hardware makers can plug into their API. Right. Right. Right. There's no reason Apple can't say to other speaker makers. You can plug into our API and get access to SIGA through HomeKit. Lauren, am I wrong about this, but, and you were there, actually just asked both of them, because you were sitting right behind me, you were sitting, I don't know, next to me. At the Apple event, did they say something about the developers finally being able to tap into Siri in some way?

On the phone. Oh, only on the phone. Oh, right. Okay, but that's a step at least. Look, let me get to my, back to my point about Amazon. I don't, if the echo is a breakthrough and a big deal and they follow through, and today's announcements show they're serious, so that could change everything. That could be, it could be the next device other than the E.N.

Kindle readers in which they're successful. I'm only saying that right now, as we sit here, all the devices between the E and Kindle and maybe the Echo have not been. And the phone is a disaster. Yeah. And I actually remember, I saw that phone a while before it hit the market. And I thought, and they, you know, they have serious people who have been at other companies doing hardware for a while. they thought they were very serious about not just selling stuff through it

but actually being a phone power and the problem was in it's Microsoft's problem too I mean it's a funny thing in that business you start late and it's very hard to get people to think you've got the gimmick or the you know the that in their case it was you you kind of flipped it was real done and it definitely vote great in Seattle when I was there, saw it, and then I got my review in it, and like, my wrist got tired, and it worked okay going right, but not going left in my case. And, you know, you could dig up the review. I wrote about that. But so they may not need the device business because they've got the other vector that I didn't even

mention that we all know about, but average people who use Amazon don't necessarily know about is they have this whole back end. They are the servers for everybody else's business. It's AWS. What's interesting about that is those are other companies, right? They're a platform provider, but they don't get any intelligence across all those companies. No, they don't, but they make money. But they make money.

But it's interesting that that would be, that's like. No, but they are, in a way, that's kind of being a platform. Right. No, it is being a platform. So they're a platform there, and they're a commerce platform. platform. And those are, that's both pretty powerful. Right. All right. So we should do, and while I know you have a hard app, but we should do five or ten on Microsoft if we have, if you have time. Because I think Microsoft, if we're,

if we're in an Apple moment, there is a Microsoft moment coming with Windows 10. But in my estimation, that moment is coming sort of, it's like careening towards us. It does not feel like an orderly. And by design, right? They've done a lot of Windows 10 out in the open. there's a lot of walk back on the new start screen and versus the desktop. It's kind of like back to the future. They've made, they've made, this Tom Warren knows the exact count. I don't, but I think they've made at least three revisions of Windows 8. And now with Windows 10, there's going to be another one that are basically backpedaling

from the original concept of Windows 8. here's the short my short point of view on Windows 10 which is not about the quality of Windows 10. Windows 10 is designed much more for reviving their phone than for improving PCs although I'm not saying it won't improve PCs but PCs are not a market that's growing nearly as fast as phones and so the phones is really crucial to them. They have a universal app format. So if you are a developer, Lauren, and you decide to make a Windows 10 app for... I'm a Windows developer. You are. Worst user story ever.

You are. What I do in my Saturdays. I know. And your productivity is way down because of the cat. But anyway, so here's their idea. Get everybody to upgrade to Windows 10 on the Pets. PC, of which there are hundreds of millions in their installed base, I don't know the exact number. Actually, I think they promised a billion devices, right?

Yeah, a billion. And once you upgrade on the PC, then there exists a Windows 10 app that can also run on the phone. Right. And then all of a sudden, the Windows phones have a whole bunch of... Right. Right. Have a whole bunch of apps, and that's been one of their big problems with phones. Here's the interesting thing.

Historically, Microsoft has never cared about upgrading to new versions of Windows. It's been about 10% of their Windows business. It's been difficult because the hardware didn't support the new version of Windows. We've all tried it. We all know this. It's usually a good column for reviewers. We'll probably do it again. But this time, they've – and so they've just not cared about it.

Plus, their partner Intel and their OEM partners like Dell, they wanted an HP. They wanted you to go out and buy a new PC anyway. This time, Microsoft's interests in the phone, which is such a strategic product, requires them to get all these hundreds of millions of people with PCs to upgrade to Windows 10 so that developers will say, okay, there's a huge market for my Windows 10 app. I'm going to be really interested to see how many people are going to want to do that. Is it going to be easy? So this is like very counterintuitive. Yeah, tell us about your surface. I want to know about your surface.

Which one do you have? I have the original surface. Such a troll, Lauren. That was built on an arm. And I bought it because it was the first computer, not counting the Xbox. I mean, the first standard computer that Microsoft did ever make. made. And I think they did a good job on the hardware on it. They did. And not the software, but they did a good job on the hardware. And I also thought it was smart to do it on arm.

I thought it was dumb to call RT. And I thought it was dumb to put a Windows desktop on it. They should have taken those office apps and let them be full screen, like people are used to with a tablet. And by not having the desktop, they wouldn't have had the problem of people thinking they could just put regular Windows apps on there. I think they should have, our listeners totally know what I think, but I think they should have called it Metro and it should have been basically their answer to the iPod or the iPad fully. You and I completely 100% agree on that. We should just end the show.

I don't know if I have. It's not a first. Do you use any Microsoft products learned? I've been using the Microsoft Surface 3, the relatively inexpensive one that they put out a short while ago that runs on an atom processor. And it's really very slow, is my observation. so far. So I'm not, I don't love it. It's not the kind of product that you're going to like, you know, run heavy apps like Photoshop off of and do all of your heavy multimedia work on.

I think this desktop apps thing to drive the phone is, is, A, when Walt said this to me yesterday, it's the most counterintuitive thing to think about Microsoft ever that they're going to use their desktop install base to court developers in their writing phone apps is, I mean, that is like a jujitsu move. No, but that's absolutely true. I'm not making that up. But what is crazy to me is I don't know that mobile developers are racing the right desktop apps. I think they're going to say just open a browser. Well, yeah, but they won't be necessarily mobile device. So in other words, they want a better, maybe I'm wrong about this example, but let's say they want a better Facebook app.

So Facebook, which typically I guess doesn't have apps on desktop. That's what I'm saying, right? Facebook is going to say open your browser. Like do better job of HTML5 in your browser. So maybe this will be a spectacular failure. But this is their strategy. Strategies take their strength, which is the kind of Moribun PC market, but still with a large install base, and use that to do this jiu-jitsu, to leverage it over to phones. And we're going to watch that drama and see what happens.

And I would actually love, I mean, it's funny I have this like MacBook Pro sitting here. Mostly it's running web apps, right? Walt and I both use Mailplane. Mailplane is basically Safari with some stuff. I just started using mailplane. Right. I've got slack open. Slack is a web app. It's an app, but it's definitely running a web view in the background.

And then it's just Chrome tabs for days. And that's what's like what's open on this computer right now. And it's a really fancy Chromebook. It's a very, it's beautiful. Don't take it away from me. Do you use any, do you use any, oh, oh, can we say one more thing? Do we have to wrap up? Well, you do have to wrap. I know. You guys keep going, but I'm going to leave. What time is it? And then on Twitter, it'll be walked out on Nilai. You know what? Here's the thing I know about great television. great radio. You got to stage some stunts. You got to get the people talking. You got to give them something good. Well, we do have one thing to mention, though, before we go. I just have to get to a

train, which is that Recode has been working on its own radio show for a little while now. And so on July 8th, we are going to be launching Recode Radio, which we're very excited about. And we're also going to be launching something called Recode Decode, which is an interview show on Recode Radio. By the Most Feared and Yet the Most Loved Woman in Silicon Valley. vampire. The Sparkling vampire herself, Kara Swisher. It's going to be great. Recode, Decode, July 8th. We're really excited. Recode's first podcast. Yeah, I don't think it'll, I mean, I don't want to say it's not going to be as entertaining as this one, but this is pretty, this is pretty fun. This one's all over the place. This was really fun for us. I have no idea how it was for the listeners, but it was Kara Swisher free.

And Recode Deco would be Carra Swisher. Adding care to anything. It's a real, real strong-up. Sam, do the rest of our engagements. Hello, thank you for watching and listening to this podcast. You laugh, but I do my thing. Got to do it, man. Go, Sam. We are on Snapchat. If you've listened to the show and you've heard me say this, you know what's good.

You should follow us on Snapchat. We are the Real Verge on Snapchat. I promise you, it will be worth watching our stories. You should hit us up on Periscope also. We're at Verge on Periscope. We take it to events. We take it all around the world. something you want to see there.

We're on YouTube, YouTube.com slash The Verge. Subscribe if you haven't. We are going to hit a million this year and you're going to make it happen. And now back to you, Nilai. All right. And then obviously there's Recode decode.

We'll be promoting that across the Verge. But you can find the rest of our shows Verge ESP and What's Tech on iTunes at iTunes.com slash The Verge. Sam on Twitter is Sam Schaeffer. Lauren is Lauren Good. Walt is Walt Mossberg. I am reckless.

The only person with that is first name on here. Thank you so much for listening. Hold on, I've got to do a thing. And I want to thank Linda.com for sponsoring our show today. Linda.com is an online learning platform with over 3,000 on-demand video courses to help you strengthen your business to connect with free 10-day trial, Linda.com slash WordPresscast. That's L-Y-M-D-A.com slash first guest. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to Walt and more for being here.

That was very chast.