The Vergecast - Purple Macbook

Episode Date: April 22, 2016

This week on Vergecast, Nilay, Dieter, Adi, and Nicola discuss the legacy of Prince, the new MacBook, and the mystery of Magic Leap. Also Nilay talks with Professor Randal Picker of University of Chicago Law School to explain Google's antirust charges from the European Union. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello. Hello, humans. Welcome to the Vergecast. The flagship podcast of Theverge.com. The Verochcast is brought to you by Sizer Vodka, which is the vodka brand that I made up. And then I'm going to just shamelessly... What can you do with Sizzer Vodka? You know, we still haven't opened this bottle of Sizur Vodka.

Someone sent me a tweet and said there's another beverage brand. I believe it's Sprite that's running ads in Miami that say cut through the heat. Ooh. Which is just... Not good. It's like, I mean... I recognize that everybody listens to the Vergecast, everyone in the entire world, and they mine us ruthlessly for ideas, but come on, Sprite.

Anyhow, this is Vergecast. I'm Mia Patel. I'm the head of Enchief the Verge. joined by Dieter Bowen. Hello. Addie Robertson is here. Hi. Nicola.

Hello. Tell the people what's up. Oh, it's a sad day. What's a, oh, it's a super sad day. I'm impacted. How we... So, if you don't know, moments an hour or so before the Vergecast began. Yeah.

The world learned that Prince... has died. Yeah. Celebrity deaths don't usually hit me because it's like, I never knew you. We never had experiences together. Everyone had an experience with Prince. But Prince is like one of the ones that's like, oh, it hurt. Like I feel it.

I really feel it. I'm sad. I grew up in Eden Prairie. Minnesota. Prince is from Minnesota, is what you're trying to say. So that's where graffiti bridge was located. And also I hung out probably about a mile and a half from Paisley Park all through my teenage years. So, like, Prince was just around.

He was, like, part of the fabric of everything. Like, if you walked in to a friend's house and, like, got to go hang out in their bedroom and they didn't have the Purple Rain poster of Prince on a motorcycle on their wall, something was wrong. Here's what I know you're listening to this and you're in your car right now, people, but take your car, wherever you are. Turn it around. Go home. Watch Purple Rain. Yeah. That's what you need to do tonight.

I mean, have you seen it? I know that you haven't seen that. Oh my God, I've seen that. You gave me the, I haven't seen it. No, no. The thing is that I don't know where it's available. Like, I haven't looked super hard into it, but I don't think it's on, like, Hulu or Netflix.

I mean, Nicola, do you want me to buy you a DVD? I have it on VHS, which is hilarious because I know. But, like, where do you? Well, that was one thing because I had to run to a meeting, like, as soon as I left to go, like, as soon as I found out I had to be somewhere. And I was like, well, what am I going to listen on the subway? Obviously, Prince. And I went on Apple Music.

and there's like only recent, weird recent stuff. You can rent it everywhere. You can rent it on Apple and Google Play and Voodoo and YouTube and whatever else. Paying. Yeah. I guess I'm going to. It's worth it. It's worth it $3.

That's what I guess. I bet the price goes up. Do you think that's right? Oh, God. That would be terrible way to. That's what I'm doing tonight. That's how cynical I am. I'm just assuming that they're going to raise the price of proper right.

But everyone should watch Purple Rain tonight. That was kind of the weird thing about Prince earlier that Prince was like the copyright antagonist musician. Yeah. Well, all of Prince's stuff is on title and nothing else. It's Fortnite. Oh, that's HD. Never mind. That's so weird. Yeah. Yeah, trying to find it. I was like, oh, this is a bird story. Where are you finding from rain? Until, I mean, Prince's history with the music industry and how it turned is actually, I think, a testament to how powerful his music is. Yeah. Because, I mean, the reason, he hated his record label. He hated Warner Brothers.

He changed his name because his lawyers decided that Warner Brothers had a contract for Prince Records. And if he changed his name to a symbol, they couldn't enforce the contract. An innovator. I mean, that's genius. So then he put out symbol records until Warner Brothers was like, whatever, I'm out. And then when the internet hit, he was like, I'm not participating in this. If you want my music, you have to pay for it. And he pulled, I mean, Prince hated the internet for a long time.

Then he was on Twitter, which was amazing. Yeah. And then he decided that title was the only service that he would. All of that is incredible. It is. I mean, just all of it is, I mean, like, if you think that this technology, he was just at the middle of it the whole time making decisions that were contrary to the entire industry. Well, and then there was the whole PMRC, like, Filthy 15, Tipper Gore stuff. Yeah.

Well, you explain. I mean, that's like Prince railing against censorship in that way, was. is also totally forward thinking. Yes, it was one of the 15 songs that was cited for having violence or satanic themes or in his case, sex. Yeah. Quite obviously.

Now, Prince actually wrote some hard, hard death metal about Satan's well. He probably did, actually. All my friends who listened to hard death metal would still listen to Prince. Everyone listened to Prince. That's the thing about Prince is that Prince is like the freak we all agree on.

Like, he's such a weird angel and everyone and everyone is like yeah I love Prince Yeah Yeah And underappreciated In incredible ways

Because he's such a great musician Prince for example Amazing guitar soloist Yep Just like rips them out Whatever he wants The Super Bowl Yeah

Where he was like what Yeah He just went Yeah Anyway I think that you should Google What's in Prince's fridge

Because there is an amazing It's like Besides what Prince created for himself. It's the best Prince content ever. It's so good. I show Google right now. It's like a local Minnesota blog for this from 2011.

And it's hotly debated if it's like fake or not. But he, they get permission to go through his fridge because it's like a bit they do in the blog. And they find like alfalfa sprouts and doncaroos. I love those crazy kangaroos.

And that's when he said, Prince's words. But Prince wasn't there. at the interview, he only provided comment by email later. It's like, you will be so happy. It's something you should look up. Yeah. I mean, it's an incredible, his persona is an incredible combination of totally raw and honest and then sealed away.

Yeah. Like, it's a very unique, the idea that Prince is completely inaccessible to you because he's so talented and basically on another planet all the time. But then he's completely raw all the time. That planet is Paisley Park, which is the most anonymous. building you can imagine in the most white bread suburb on the face of the earth. Yeah. Like Chanhassen, like, it has Paisley Park and like

a pretty bad dinner theater. That's its entire culture and like a Walmart now. I love when a celebrity like stays where they came from. Or like nearby, you know? There's like, he's like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to do this in L.A. I'm going to do this in suburbs of Minneapolis. Yeah. For instance, like a Minnesota boy threw in a pretty sure he wears purple because he's a Viking.

fan. Did you ever hear the song? I can't believe I just got away with that. And Dieter's like, I'm going to roll with it. He wrote a, like, a fight song for the Vikings. Yeah. It's awful. Well, I think we're going to, look, here, we can't do justice to Prince on the Virgin.

No, we can try. But the way to do Prince justice is to go home and watch Purple Rain, which is one of, yes, it's to spend $3 in the memory of a true artist. Yeah, I'm going to have it. That's a smart water. Spend a smart water on... Yeah, spend a smart water. That's awful.

That's how we commemorate our loved ones. A smart water at the airport. Yeah. Wait, do you buy discount smart water on the streets? No, it's just like more expensive. Like, it might be like 250 regular places, but it might be a three and change at the airport. I got it. Let's talk about this MacBook that Dieter has.

I have a rose gold MacBook in my hands. Yeah. So this came out this week. Yeah. It's a spec-bumped MacBook. so it's the thin one. Looks and feels and acts, well, not axe,

but looks and feels precisely like the old one, one USBC port, one headphone jack, super thin keyboard, beautiful screen. So they put a Skylight class processor, but don't get too excited because it's still the CoreM version of a Skylight processor. Yeah.

Which means that it's slower. A processor that wasn't power efficient enough for phones. Yeah. That's how I think about that processor. That's not totally unfair. But it's still fanless, which is pretty cool. So I haven't like given it full benchmarks, but I've like I've ran some benchmarks and I've been playing around with it. And I would say it feels about 25% faster than the last MacBook overall.

Do you have the M3 or the M? This is the M5. Okay, the middle one. Yeah. But like 25% faster than the last MacBook is still like not as fast as like your average MacBook air 13 inch. Yeah. But it like if there's if you were like on the line and you're like maybe, I don't know, this is the one that'll be like, okay.

Yeah, I bought that one the first day. Yeah. I have to buy a new MacBook. Would you buy this color? I'm going to buy the gold. You're by the gold. Are you ready to live that dangle life? My God.

Please say more about that. You can't plug your shit into it. You need to have adapters for everything. Yeah, no, I was looking on the apple.com this morning, and I was like, I didn't realize I had so many choices. There aren't that many choices. There's more than a Mac. The only Mac that anyone should buy right now is that one. If that one is right for you.

Every other Mac you should wait. Yeah, do not buy a Mac unless this one is perfect for you because everything else is coming, getting updated. If you really want this Mac, get this Mac. If you just need to get a Mac and you're not sure if this is the Mac, you should wait. How long? At least till June. Yeah, WDC. I don't know.

My home computer is going to make it. What's your home computer? A MacBook Pro from like 2012. Oh, you'll be fine. It's been waiting for a lot. time. It can probably wait a couple months. So slow. It also has a cracked screen. Yeah, that's rough. That's brutal. Didn't know you could do that. You can. So I've told this story. For Becky has a MacBook error that I bought from Dieter in like 2010 or 2011.

Yeah. Because she was, she had an original MacBook error and she was rushing to go and take the LSAT in Chicago. No, not the LSAT, Jesus. The bar exam in Chicago, which is a bit more high pressure than the L set. And you have to take it on a computer and her MacBook Air died like two days before she had to get on a plane. And I was like, indeed her was like, I'll just sell you this computer.

So we just needed a computer. It's like bought this computer and gave it to Becky. But he went past the bar exam. That's great. Proud of her. And then she just, we just kept it. That was her computer. We never did the thing that we said we were going to do

and like buy a new computer afterwards. And it's so old. and the fans run full blast. Like, every night I sit next to Becky in the couch and, like, hang out. And we just listen to her computers fan. That's what we do. It's like the idea that I won't listen to that fan every night hasn't even occurred to me. But the house will be peaceful.

What if it's part of your, like, relaxing at night, like a white noise that you've come to know? We need to buy a white noise generator. What if it gets too quiet? Well, it'll be like electric cars, how they have to simulate a motor noise. Eventually we'll have computers that simulate a fan noise. Exactly. This computer isn't fast enough, and it's like making brim-v-v-v-brum sounds. But anyway, so I didn't want to buy her the old retina one.

Right. Because it was only just as fast as her five-year-old computer, which is depressing. You don't want to spend $1,200 in that computer there isn't any faster. So this one is like slightly faster and totally pushed us over the hump. It's way faster on the things that probably won't matter her. Like discrate speed is like 90% faster. Discrete speed is like, I don't know, 20 and 30% faster. I said this to yesterday.

It's like they couldn't find a faster processor. So they're like, what about super fast SSDs? Yeah. Well, they did. I mean, they did find a faster processor. And they get, it gets an hour better battery life. Right. And the other one, thanks to the processor.

And Apple tells me that it's about like the battery chemistry. Yeah. So it's the same milliamps, but it's at 37 watt hours. It's 40. Yeah. So they're just, they like, they figured out something mysterious. For the first time in history. battery chemistry has been improved.

Yeah. Well, not history. I don't know. They did not make that claim. No. I mean, Apple would. There's a Johnny I video waiting to happen. It's like him in a lab.

What's the last time we got a Johnny Eye video? He's like, we used to add nickel to hydrides, but now I've had lithium to these ions. That's not how you make batteries. We haven't seen a Johnny Eye video since the Apple Watch. No, Johnny Ive has disappeared. Yeah. He's out of the picture. He made like a yellow iPad for charity.

Yeah. But he hasn't done a product launch event video. I think they realized it had become self-parity. Yeah. For sure. You can't hear the man say aluminum and like aluminum and be impressed anymore. Anyway, so we bought this one, but the dongle life, I asked back, I was like, this is going to be super annoying for you.

We have magsafe adapters all over the house. But the battery lasts longer, but now I have to use this one cable to plug it in, and there's no other ports. Do you plug anything into your computer ever? And all she said was, this is going to suck when I travel because I plug my phone into my laptop to charge it when I travel. And so I went on Amazon and bought her an anchor USB block with a USBC. So that's her.

Yeah. But it's like you have to like come up these solutions for a really stupid problem. Yeah. I mean, I carry, let me count. I carry one to, I carry four adapters in my bag now. I could drop it down to three. So one is USBC out to a plug that has a USBC to power in and HTML if I want it and a regular USBA. One is just a USBA cable. One is a

SD card reader and one is another, I used to carry this like multi-port thing but it failed on me because it was like cheap and like not as good as they claimed. So techie, you're the worst. But because when that thing failed, I like tossed it but I was like, man, I don't trust these devices now. So now I carry an extra USB adapter just in case. So yeah, I carry four dongles. I can't be living like that. Yeah.

You know, I use this as my biggest battery. Yeah. Yeah, but you should buy one. By the way, you can buy a USBC to lightning cable if you want. So you don't have to use an adapter to charge your phone. But that cable's like $20. But like my,

my packs charges from the computer. You gotta buy one of these anchor things. By the way, is anybody from Anchor listening to this podcast? If you buy one of these anchor batteries, you can use it to charge the laptop. Where did Anchor come from? They came from Google. Yeah, it's a bunch of ex-Goal engineers.

They all move to China and now they make the best, like stuff. Yeah. They just, they've just arrived on the scene. There was no anchor and now every time I'm like, I need a battery or a plug or whatever. I'm like,

buy the anchor one. You might say they're like, they just, they just dropped it. Dieter has fired. And I, I didn't want to say this earlier. Because it is such a sad day.

But Dieter, this today will be a last day of first. I was fucking awful. What? No, seriously, if you, if you work at Anchor or you have a loved one that works at Anchor,

or you know anybody that works the anchor, please tell me where they came from and what their story is and how we can get a hold of them. We should do like an anchor feature. How do you just get into the business of being the most dominant supplier of things with USB plugs?

That's like story. That's a vert story. Yeah, I want to know the short answer. Yeah, I mean, I think it's like there are a bunch of Google engineers who had a reasonable line of design sense and they realized there was a market for batteries and USB things.

But those little USB bricks, I'm telling you, they're like, revelatory. Yeah, they're great. They change your life. I got some thinking to do this weekend. Yeah, about a new MacBook. Yep.

But the gold one. The gold one. Yeah. I went from thinking about buying one of these ultra-thin, not very powerful, carry-it anywhere you go, battery-lass all-day MacBooks to buying a, like, 20-pound laptop gaming rig in the space of about 20 minutes. Wasn't there a VR-capable laptop that came out today? Yes.

Yes. It's the Acer. Predator 17X. I'm buying this laptop. Cool name. Which just takes a like normal desktop graphics card and substitutes it for the notebook graphics card that was in the original Predator 17. So it's the entire bottom of this thing a heatsink?

It's like it's like 10 pounds. It adds two pounds to the other one. This thing does look sick. But the real answer is you do, dude, you need to wait to see if you can get a razor blade paired with a razor core and if that'll do it. But that one weighs 10 pounds and has a desktop class. GPU bolted to the bottom. Yeah, you could instead... It also looks like it's going to eat you. You could instead

get a laptop that isn't insane. It still has an insane light up keyboard. You'll get the requisite amount of insanity. And then you just have a thing that looks like a tiny old Mac Pro tower that your graphics card goes in. Yeah. I hear what you're saying. It is very

appealing to me. But that laptop looks like it would burn a village down and then laugh while the blood of its enemies dripped from its jaws. This laptop is straight out a witcher. Sam says that it was inspired by intergalactic battleships in his review, I believe. See, we need this thing. We got it.

I mean, every laptop is, every gaming laptop is inspired by something ridiculous and terrible, like a fighter jet. Yeah. Or a snake. You've got a full desktop gaming rig at home, right? Yes. Okay. And it's tasteful.

Okay. It's tasteful. One of my favorite Addy stories was the very first CES, Addie showed up to cover the trade show with a gaming laptop. It was so huge. and a netbook. But the netbook wasn't powerful enough. So by the end, you would see Addie, and she would just be, like, hidden behind this, like, monster. What was it? It was an Assus, I forget what year was, like 2010 or something. I gave it to James to take

apart and take pictures of it. So I'm sacrificing it. It was incredible. I mean, that was an incredible laptop in an incredible moment. And I think gaming laptops should come back. Yeah. But theoretically, they're going to. With VRPCs, although really they're just good for people who make games and have to cart around a VR setup all the time to show other people. Yeah, but I don't want to buy gaming PC. Like, I've thought about it a lot. Where am I going to put it? Like, I think gaming laptops that can do VR are the solution to the what is my VR room

problem that we've talked about in the show like a bunch of times. Right. Right? You can just like unfold it, put it down, plug in the headset, and go. And I mean, this is a ridiculous solution. I mean, which is great for the RIF. For the Vive, it's like you already have so many plugs. and so much crazy stuff that it's like, what's one more thing?

Well, the other solution that might end up happening is your console is going to do it because PlayStation can run PSVR. There's a PlayStation Neo apparently that's coming to be faster. And now we're hearing rumors that there's like a next Xbox 1.5 that's also maybe going to be more powerful and be able to support VR directly. Nobody knows yet. Yeah. It would be absolutely insane if you could run the Oculus Rift off an Xbox one.

Yeah, but it might not be insane if you could. Oh, no, insane in a good way. Oh, okay. Like, that would be kind of crazy if that was their solution to you needing a giant gaming PC. Right. Yeah. And I keep on pointing out that Microsoft Facebook are very, very close. A lot closer than people seem to think, is my belief.

Okay. I mean, there's an Xbox-1 controller in the thing. Why wouldn't Oculus go to Microsoft and be like, look, you want it to be a Windows 10 PC. We need a really powerful Windows 10 PC. Just upgrade that thing. But it's the Xbox One, so it'll probably just crash along the way. Yeah. I own an Xbox one, so I'm allowed to be salty.

Xbox 1. I have to, I took the risk of putting the Xbox 1 in an entertainment cabinet. And I would say every third time I use it, I need to like open the door, point a fan at the box. Really? There's space for it to vent, but just not quite enough. Mine has a delightful new problem where it decides that controllers no longer need to pair to it.

Oh, that's nice. So why don't you just unplug it all the way and, you know, go have a drink, talk to an old friend on the phone, plug it back in and see. if it wants to play game. Xbox 1 only today got a HBO Now app. Yeah. I don't know. Maddie, would you...

1 to 10, how's the Xbox 1 doing in the market? Is it fine? I mean, I guess it's okay in the same way that Windows is kind of always okay no matter how bad it is. Yeah. Because it's the thing that plays maybe some of the games that you want.

Yeah. And, I mean, PSVR seems like it could be a really cool draw for PlayStation, but yeah, people will, there will always be people who don't want a PlayStation or want another thing. And those people are very mad at you right now. There are more people that don't want a gaming PC than there are people who don't want a PlayStation, right? And there's enough people that have a PS4 that I still think the PSVR is like going, by this holiday,

we'll be anointing the PSVR as like the winner for a while. I mean, maybe for gaming stuff. I just, VR is so multifarious that like the Vive is announcing some kind of commercial partnership with like an architecture firm. Speaking of VR, if you didn't hear last week, I do need to disclose. Oh, man, we forgot. My wife works for Oculus.

Not yet. It's like days away. Yeah. By the time you listen to this in your car. Yeah. In your car. Yeah. There you go.

Dieter's wife works on Oculus. He's hopelessly corrupted. But I do not hear anything about Oculus from him, so. Yeah. Yeah. That is also true. Yeah. It's just really.

I just said it was going to lose. I don't know if you're back. I mean, it's really just this show where that issue is presenting itself. All the rest of the side, it's like there's like all these walls and procedures and Dieter knows not to do it. But then we're like, Dieter, come on the Vergecast. He's like, I can't talk about anything today. Yeah.

We'll get through it. And if you, the audience, think it's such a problem, let us know. But I suspect you, the audience, are going to come with us on this journey into ethical boundaries. Do you enjoy watching Peter be uncomfortable? Tune into the Vergecast live at 430 Eastern on Thursdays. We also got a favorite what we're going to do when you go to San Francisco. This is true. Let me know in the comments or on Twitter if you would die without a live verge cast.

Let me know if you'd prefer not a live verge cast or a verge cast without Dieter. There's no verge cast. I'm not doing that. I'm not having this conversation. Okay. Conversation over it. Anyway, let me ask you a question about Rose Gold Things. Yes.

So that you, what? That's next on my list. Okay. It's just here on the list. Several weeks ago, you came on the show. show and you're like, I don't understand why there's so much rose gold, it's over. Apple's doubled down in rose gold. That is the rose goldest thing they've ever made. I got feelings. Samsung decided it's really rose gold. Samsung put out pink gold galaxy S-7s this week.

Is there what's going on? Is this going to just keep happening to us? I'm, I'm so confused, because this I think comes from Apple and Apple has, is keeping an eye on on, on the a trends outside of technology, obviously. Like, that's her thing. And seeing like, okay, there's a lot of rose gold jewelry going around. It's, like, kind of in the effort. So then they, like, go into this version of rose gold that's so pink. And it's so weird to me because it reminds me of, like, the weird, brightly colored, like,

desktop Macs and, like, iPod minis of my aughts experience. And then they, like, move totally to, like, slick. You know, like, you don't see, like, a green, there's a green iPhone now. And this to me is, like, like, cartoonish in color. And I imagine if it was the same thing, but it was blue or green. It would look weird. It's weird to me. Yeah.

It shouldn't be the saturated. It should be desaturated. One tick down. Like three. It'd be cool if it was, like, a gentle rose gold. But this is just, this is dusty salmon. I mean, that's my new beach bar, the dusty salmon. Dasty Salmon.

Cissor vodka shots our from... The dusty salmon. Yeah. Yeah. Five to seven every night. And how do you make it

salmon colored though? Because you would need to combine there's a pink Cizzer Vodka. I don't know. Don't you just add a drop of Cran? Yeah.

That's the dusty salmon at the dusty salmon. It's just a little bit of cranberry juice. Shouldn't there be some flavor? Shouldn't there be some glitter in it? What kind of bar do you think

of Ronnie Teeter? Maybe it's a aporal. It's a beach bar. You come to chill out. You don't come to chill out. You don't come to get lit? No, the scale, I see.

Addie, weren't you saying that you would buy a colorful computer today? I saw you, like, dropping pictures of old IMAX somewhere. Yeah, so I've missed out on absolutely every generation of colorful Apple things. I missed out on the Ibook. I wanted one really badly. I missed out on the iPod minis. By the time I was buying Apple products, they were all super brushed aluminum. And I really liked the era of things that seem kind of weird and personalized.

Yeah. And I also just would love like a dark kind of emerald green one. I love the idea of this emerald green. I think it'd be really nice, but like super dark. Okay. Like your fern? No, darker than the fern. Darker than the fern.

Okay. But like, edging into jade territory. Oh, I see. Somewhere between. With that hinted metallic. Oh, that would be nice. Yeah. That could be nice.

I've never been a green person, but this is a green I can get behind. Yeah. No, I think green is on the come up. Watch out. It could be the next rose gold. Green is my least favorite color. Sorry, Addy's wearing a green shirt. Addy, your shirt's great.

Green is my least favorite color. It's okay. I don't have a strong investor. into my shirt. What about like James Barham loves green? Our creative doctor loves green. He's constantly showing me green things. Green in what context?

What kind of green? What kind of green? I mean, that's a lot of range. Generally not a green person. The problem with the internet is it doesn't show cool, like, dark army or dark forest green very well. Like the only green that works in the internet is like, green. You know, computer, this is going to sound like I'm fucking stone.

But go with me. Computers are very bad at colors. Have you noticed this? Like red on the internet is a huge problem. Nothing red can exist on the internet because JPEG compression will crush it hell or you have to deliver like a massive PNG. Yep. It's like red's just out of the question.

Interesting. And as Deeter saying, green, somewhat out of the question. Just fades in the black when you get it dark enough to be really cool. Yeah. It's just a real problem. We live in a, we live in a color space that is tightly defined by shitty web browsers. Wow. And that's all the colors that you can imagine in the world are like Netscape coded them in like 1994.

I mean, I also have to check everything I do on multiple computers if I really want to see how it's going to look. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's a real problem. Everyone should just have a 5K iMac with the increased color gamut. Including on their smartphones. That's a really weird transition to the next thing. Okay.

Do you want to transition next thing? No, because I don't have the front of me. Addie, do you want to talk about Magic Leap right away? Do you want to take a quick digression into Google and the EU? Which way do you want to go? I'm, let's, we can go into Google EU. Okay. The big news is that the EU filed an antitrust case against Google, saying,

that they're illegally using their Android monopoly to tie Google search in the Google Play Store. And they're tying them together and illegally using the Android monopoly in the European Union to force out competitors to Google search on mobile and force out competitors to Android, which is a weird thing to think about Google doing

because they make Android. Yep. So I'm joined now by Randy Picker, who is a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, who specializes in antitrust, among many other things. How's it going, Randy? Actually, very nicely. Yeah, I mean, this has got to be exciting for you. There's some action in the world.

Yeah, well, there's always action. But yes, so I woke up this morning and turned on Twitter and saw that while I was asleep, the European Union had gone off and done what people said they were going to do. And what that was, as you may recall, roughly a year ago, after a very extended investigation into Google, the EU announced what they call their statement of objections, which is basically, we've got a case we think against you. And they brought that case against Google relating to Google shopping. That case is still going on.

There's actually been almost nothing public about that. At the same time, when they brought that case, they also said, oh, by the way, Google, we're going to launch an investigation into Google Android. And that was all basically in April, mid-April of last year. And today, they said, we've investigated, and now we think we've got a case against you relating to Android. In that case is basically it's about two different things.

It's about Google search being preloaded on the phones. Yes. And then Verge readers will probably know this, but I'll explain a little bit. There's an anti-fragmentation clause that says if you're going to use Google services on an Android phone, you can't then ship another phone that forks Android and some other weird. Yeah, you've got great users if they understood that. So we've covered the hell out of this, actually. That's wonderful.

So I'm desperate to hear what you think is going to happen here. But my take on it is that the EU actually fundamentally misunderstands how important that anti-fragmentation clauses. But I want to hear from you first. So tell me how you think this is going to play out. So Android, as you know, and Google published something on this on their public policy, European public policy bloggerning. They say, look, it's open source. That's the deal. How are we getting in trouble here?

The reality is, I think when you look at the Android system, as it were, I sort of think of it like, almost the alphabet, not Google Alphabet, but the alphabet, where let's say 21 letters will call them the consonants or open source, and everyone's got a proprietary bottle set. And what happens here is there's a lot of underlying code in Android, which is open source, but key pieces of the system that you need to run a serious Android phone are proprietary. That's what Google Play is. And so the EU's contention is that while anyone can use, as it were, the consonants here,

Google's got its own special set of vowels, and it's using those vowels to force you to take other Google products, including Google Search. Right. We call that tying in the antitrust world. So if your listeners know forking, they should know tying. And tying is the idea that I am distorting competition in the second space based upon my control of a key adjacent space. So here the allegation is based upon Google's control over Google Play, they're able to effectively force search to continue with the wrinkle here that the EU sees Google is trying to extend its monopoly on the desktop in search, which they assume to exist, into the mobile space. Right. But so my argument and my question is, didn't we have a vibrant mobile market of something like six platforms vying for control and don't.

Dominance. Didn't Google just win outright? Yeah, so I don't know who wins. As I count them, we have two winners here. Yeah. Yes, exactly. And it's completely fair to say that the transformation in the mobile OS space, so if I say symbion to a normal person, you have no clue what I'm talking about. You say, oh, yeah, Nokia used to be this and this and this, look what happened. So it's completely fair to say that we had this moment of competition and the group. Google in some sense was one of the winners. That's clearly right.

The EU doesn't dispute that. The EU says it's fine to have winners. It's once you've won, what are you allowed to do? That's the antitrust issue. So is this all focused on search? Because it seems like if you want to take advantage of the large ecosystem of Android apps in the Play Store, that's the thing that's going to help you sell your phone. And Google's saying, well, you can have that, but it comes. with these conditions, chief among them, Google Search has to be the default search engine.

Yeah, so the EU just gave us a little window into what they're thinking is. So there was a speech by Commissioner of the Stager this morning. There's a press release. There's a fact sheet. I would say what they're saying is a couple of things, certainly about search, but they're also concerned, and maybe this will go to the fragmentation clause you want to talk about, about the extent of competition in the Android space itself, let's say the Android OS space or the Android store space.

I think the EU thinks they'd like to see more competition there and that the anti-fragmentation clause is working against that. Sure, let's get into that. It feels like magical thinking to me because if you undo this anti-fragmentation clause, one, app developers are going to have to start supporting multiple variants of Android, which is very difficult to do.

And in fact, the reason that Amazon's phone failed is because they could not get app developers to support their crazy ideas about what a phone should be. Exactly. And on top of it, and this one, it's like, you know, you've got to sort of take it on faith, that Google is actually a better actor for the consumer than any phone carrier or OEM. And I say it's on faith, but I think the Verge audience listening to this in particular will happily tell you that they would rather have a Google phone than whatever garbage Samsung will do or whatever garbage, Verizon or telephonic or whatever else, whatever carrier nonsense

would get loaded onto some custom variant of Android that's actually regressive in many ways. And Google's power over the ecosystem is the thing that makes Android successful. Yeah, so you said a couple of really interesting things there. So let's take those pieces. So what idea here is is the, I think it's fair to say, and we saw this in the EU's Microsoft Windows media player case. they believe in fragmentation. So that case, if you'll recall, they were very concerned that Microsoft was effectively going to take over the media world by embedding media player in Windows.

They were crystal clear that they understood that in fragmenting that market, they were going to push up costs, that music manufacturers and producers were going to have to support multiple formats, and that would all be more expensive. They didn't care, and they implemented a remedy that didn't work at all. But I think they're very much from either a mindset standpoint or just naturally believe in the benefits of competition, even at greater costs, and the cost you identified are crystal clear. The second point you made is the one that they don't talk about in any way, shape, or form. And that's sort of Google as counterweight in a world that you've got these very large, as it were, you know, mobile players. that's interesting. I don't know what to say about that. I can't say that's wrong.

I don't think that's figuring in their analysis at all. This seems like a very carrier-favorable ruling, or a carrier-favorable allegation, right? That Google's illegally-tying search, they're using this anti-fragmentation clause to reduce competition, but the only people, the only actors that will help, are telecom carriers who have historically been the most anti-consum. And I just don't see that sense of history kind of pervading this thinking.

Well, so I think it's completely fair to say that it's very much a hope and a prayer to think that when they, if this anti-fragmentation clause magically went away tomorrow, how much entry do we think we would see in the Android forking market? Maybe some. My guess is not a lot. So that doesn't seem like we're going to buy much there. And the counterweight point against the carriers, I absolutely see what you're saying. there. Well, I mean, so Samsung right now, and I'll just pick on Samsung as but one example,

because they are the most powerful actor in the Android ecosystem. Samsung makes obviously the most popular Android phones. They also make phones that run their own operating system, Tysen. They did for a brief minute make Microsoft-based phones. Right. I mean, Samsung will do anything, right? And it's not a far stretch to say they would make some forked variant of Android, thus threatening the ecosystem. But what is actually more true, and I think much more likely, is that some European carrier would go out and commission a phone that runs its own app store, its own services, and say to the public, this phone is much cheaper than the other phones because it uses our services. And that begins to do something that is very old and very familiar, which is start to lock down the consumer to a particular carrier, which is the reason that none of these ecosystems really developed in the past. Yeah, though I say, oh, that's a different flavor of competition.

Let's play that out. Interesting. So it's almost a retrograde move that way. Right. So what happens next here? Well, I mean, so, so, I mean, mechanically, Google gets 12 weeks to respond and blah, blah, blah, blah. But, I mean, I think the real question is, and part of what we can't see is, I mean, Google, if I'm Google, I'd like to be done with it. between the antitrust fronts and between the right to be forgotten fronts.

And I assume most of the Google people would be vacationing in the United States this year. You know, can I get a global antitrust settlement in the EU would be the question I would ask, right? Can I wrap up the Google shopping case, which I see is quite different than this case? And really almost a sideshow compared to this case. This case strikes me so much more important than the Google shopping product, which is never struck it's very important. You know, now we've got our hands on at least a version of the future of mobile. So hugely more important.

The other piece of this is, and you never can tell until you've gone inside, if Google gave up each of these contractual conditions tomorrow, what would it cost them? The market's so much in their favor at this point that I would think it wouldn't cost them very much. So, you know, handing money to lawyers for a company like Google's cheap to do, they can do that, they can fight in the system for a while. They could just settle and be done with it, maybe move forward. But that's, I certainly don't have any powerful insight of what Google wants to do. And think of the week they've had, right?

As you know, the Supreme Court denied cert didn't take the case in the Google Book Search case. So earlier this week, the legal system has rewarded this visionary. a legal strategy that they applied in copying 10 million books and seeing what would happen. And now the legal system is struck back. Doesn't it always? Yeah. Just real quick, how does this compare to what happened with Microsoft with the browser ballot and Windows Media Player? Are they of a piece or is this something else?

Well, so, man, I hope the EU is learning something. So the EU had two important cases against Microsoft, I'll say. So one was the Windows media player case that I mentioned earlier. The remedy they required there was to require Microsoft. They have a version of Windows with the media player, one without. Same price could be charged. And the marketplace rejected that completely. They sold under 2,000 copies of the version without the media.

I understand why that revenue might have been sensible on paper. Indeed, I wrote a paper before they did that remedy as to why it might be sensible at nowhere. Then, as you just mentioned, when they got to the EU Internet Explorer case, Microsoft's getting ready to roll out Windows 7. They don't want to have a big fight with them, so they settle. And what they settle on is the browser ballot. And that means every time you turned on a new Windows machine in Europe, you were presented with 14 different browser choices. Yes, and that. irony of that because the original U.S. case was litigated on the premise of two choices was

confusing. But 14 there. And that remedy seems to have accomplished nothing. That remedy got broken when they released service PAC 1, and no one noticed for 17 months. So the point of all that was was two completely failed remedies. I think it's fair to say in the Microsoft case. So that should tell them here that maybe they should if they can cut this deal where they turn off these contractual provisions and say Google stop telling people they can't do this, settle for that. Don't do anything more dramatic. And let's see what will happen. My guess is nothing will happen.

Got it. Well, we'll certainly check back in with you if anything else happens. That would be great. Thank you for coming on the show. Randall Picker from the University of Chicago. Thanks, man. Thank you. The challenge to your line of thinking here that like the EU regulators are just crazy for

thinking that if they that Google should just let there be forks of Android and it would uh like the fragmentation is not an issue because we actually like Google owns it is if they had done that from jump then they wouldn't have been able to build the relatively cohesive ecosystem they have underneath Google play right it might be now if they were to like if Google were to like say okay fine we're going to get rid of the non fragmentation agreement uh that a bunch of people would jump at the chance and they realize that Google already has too much of advantage in the Play Store and they would wither because people just want to get the Google stuff. But the question is like, why can't Google say, yeah, go ahead and do whatever you want,

make whatever you want, but you only get Google apps on like the phones that we approve. Right. I don't know. That's like the question. I mean, is Google so much more powerful? But if you're Google, you make Android, you give it away for free and you say if you want the rest of our stuff, you have to agree not to screw with it. Although I will say that like the version of the way that most people who have Google Android devices experience it, like a lot of the best stuff in it is the Google stuff. And I'm not just talking about, you know, Gmail and photos and the Chrome browser. And the persistent ad tracking. Yeah, yeah.

They're like they're pushing out security updates via the Google Play ecosystem. They're pushing out browser updates via the Google Play ecosystem. So the divergence between like the fully open source do it or how you want with it version of Android and Google's version of Android is getting wider. Yeah. This is ridiculous. Like the reason Android is successful is because Google exerts this control. And three years ago, the conversation was can Google control fragmentation in their ecosystem? And they figured it out.

Mostly. Mostly. But they figured it out. Like the worst example of fragmentation right now in the ecosystem is like. OS versions. OS versions. Samsung can't stop putting dumb water drop sounds on the phone. Oh, they did.

They totally stopped putting water drops on the phone. They're still there. I had an Uber driver with 10 a 7 the other day, and it was definitely... But you can turn them on if you like them. Yeah, they're there. I mean, just as a matter of taste. Like, don't put them there. Make people work for them much harder.

Yeah. It's a terrible idea. You can get one on your pink galaxy. Yeah. LG's launcher is still disaster. Yeah, it's just stuff, right? It's like these tiny little problems. But the actual phones are fine.

And, like, the app developers are half. I think you can like ship an app and it works on a bunch of phones. Yeah, they're happy, they're just not getting paid. Yeah. Maybe we should all stop having phones. Back to laptops. Stop using your phone. Hmm.

And isn't Google's best remedy to just make their own phone, which all of us kind of want them to do? Yeah. Right? Like, okay, fine, Samsung, you can fork away, enjoy. We're gonna make our own phone and it's gonna be the high-end phone competitor of the iPhone that everybody wants Google to do. Yep. Right? I'd buy that phone. I mean, I did buy that phone. It's called the Nexus 6B. Yeah. I just wish it had in the camera. The camera's fine. It's good. It's not good.

Yes, it is. Adi, what phone do you have right now? Still the HDC M8, which is actually kind of broken. I can't use headphones with it anymore. Well, headphones are a thing of the past. Are you going to get an M10? I'm sorry, a 10? No, I'm going to wait. I'm buying my phone purely based on what's best for VR, which means I'm going to wait and see if Google announces something with Tango. And then if they don't, I'm going to get an S7, I guess. Yeah. Yes, I mean, that is the phone to get. I'm on an MVNO. I'm on straight talk.

Okay. I'll just swap my SIM. No, MV&Os are great. I actually am super pro and BNO, super pro prepaid. I think that that's a way to go. My parents signed up for AT&TU versus now. I have unlimited data. Ooh.

But they also... But you're on your parents' plan? Well, I pay for them. Okay. Oh, reverse parents. I mean, it's not like they use any data. Yo, my mom and I are. going to start splitting a plan.

So I was like, can you just look and see, like, how much data you use so I can, like, figure out what were, well, makes sense. And she was like, I used 0.7. Yeah. And I was like, oh. My dad has my old iPhone 5, and it's still surprising him with capabilities. Like, it's adorably so. He's like, it can send text messages.

I'm like, I know. I'm with you. But, yeah, so they're on my plan. My mom's iPad is on my plan. They don't use any data. But then the U-Vverse people, like, showed up at the house. sold them the U-verse, tearing out all of my carefully constructed home theater set up for them, because that's what cable people do.

Oh, man. They show up in a day just fly out to fix it. No, whatever. It's like, you made your bed. Like, you're flying it. But then my dad, God bless him, was like, whatever, it's a great deal, limited data. I don't even need the limited data. What else can you give me?

And they're like, we're going to set up a complete smart home for you. So like, the garage doors are going. No. The locks are going. They're putting in motion detectors. ADT is out. There's a new security system. And my dad calls me. He's all proud.

He's a should be. He's got a bunch of free shit. But I was like, he's like, and there's going to be an app on the phone. And there's nothing more terrifying than hearing my parents say that they need to learn how to use a new app on their phones. It is, it, there is a gnawing pit of despair in my life that comes from the idea of my parents calling me and saying, we're looking at the phone and something's wrong. can you fix it? Because there's literally no way for them to appropriately communicate to me what's on the... Like, no one can do it.

You cannot describe an app on a phone. No, you can't. You just can't. It doesn't matter how, like, we do it professionally. But if, like, my nest blows up and I call you, I'm like, can you fix my nest app? Just a mat. Like, it would still be hard. You need to buy an LTE connected, like, drop cam.

Oh, my God, I'm like, I'm like getting emotional about it. It needs to be like air-gapped away from anything that they can touch or control in terms of their internet or home cell. It's just the camera. And all you can do is turn it on. You'd be like, just walk over to the camera. Yeah. And just hold up the camera. Alternatively, you could just use Skype.

No, no, no, because Skype happens. No, no, this is like. Don't they have like a Chromebook or something? FaceTime happens on the phone. So the app breaks on the phone. They call me from the phone. They totally have a Chromebook or something, right? They do have a Chromebook or something.

No, we could do it. it's just their instinct, it's amazing. But anyway, so I'm dreading the day that the smart home install happens. But you can't also be like you should turn down free stuff. AT&T has been trying to convince me that they are a huge power player in the smart home every CTIA for like the past five years. Yeah. I've never believed them.

And apparently I was wrong because they're selling it to. They're not selling it. They're literally just foisting it on the unsuspecting. They're just like, they're not paying for it. any of this gadgetry that's getting installed? No, it's showing up in their house. They're like, sign up for you verse. I was like, cool, we'll get free data.

Wait, I don't need any data. My son used it, but we're fine. What else can you give me? And they're like, smart home and just like foisted it on them. Oh, my God. Can they turn around and sell all the smart home stuff? I don't know.

No, I think that AT&T comes and installs it for you so you have to like uninstall it. I could strip it out, sell it for parts. I feel like it's probably least or something. Like, you probably have to give it back. You are almost certainly have to like rent it. Yeah. Although I do the picture of Addie going to my parents' house with like a tool belt and just like stripping the smart home. Like leaving the house as a shell and like Addie's driving away and they're up truck. It's like kind of amazing.

I don't know. Whatever. We'll see. We'll see how it goes. Also, we were, it's another story. We were looking at a house in a rural area and we were like, how do we get internet at this house? And the Verizon salesperson told us that all of the internet in the area had been used up. And if you would like to add internet to this house, we'd have to go talk. talked to the neighbors and convince one of them to disconnect their internet so that we could hook up our internet. I'm fairly certain I've actually heard that at my in-laws house. Is that real? I don't know if it's real. But internet there is very weird. Becky called me and she's like, I don't think this is real.

She's like, I want you to talk to them. I was like, what's the threat? She's like, well, I don't think they know what you do. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe Verizon workers should be on strike. Should be on strike. Yeah. They're marching in front of the office.

earlier. We're wearing shirts that said invest in Fios, not executive pay, which I thought was a very clever burn. If you want to strike deep at the heart of New Yorkers, you tell them that Lowell Macadam is taking a paycheck instead of giving you Fias. I wonder if I can get Google Fiber where I'm moving. Okay. Let's all Google for internet access. All right, Ida, let's talk about Magic Leap. Okay. So Magic Leap, we haven't heard anything about him, and then we heard lots of things about them, but they weren't very useful things. Yeah, I mean, what did we hear? So, How badly are we going to burn Wired in this segment? I would say medium.

I like Kevin Kelly. I think Kevin Kelly is a very, like, we interviewed him for my VR piece. I think he's a really good writer, and I think that they probably did the best that they could with Magic Leap. It's just that Magically will not reveal anything. Let's start with the start. So, wired, and God bless Wired. Like, we know a lot of people who are there. David Pierce works a Wired.

Good friend of mine. Good friend of all of ours. Joe Brown, Wired's Magiator. Great dude, right? Great, just great staff, great magazine. Kevin Kelly wrote a piece for Wired. Kevin Kelly was the original editor-in-chief of Wired. And who also, like, wrote a ton about virtual reality in the late 80s, early 90s, like he's OG, VR.

Yeah. They commissioned him to write a cover story for Wired this month about a company called Magic Leap, which has $1.4 billion in investment from Google, from Anderson Horowitz, from like, rando celebrities, they are located in Miami. Central Florida? They're located somewhere in Florida, like an office park. I think they're around Orlando. That makes sense. But I'm not sure.

Michael's just making a face. I lived in central Florida. I knew Central Florida. I am Central Florida. You don't want to, you don't. It's not Fort Lauderdale. The Wright of South Florida. Okay, Fort Lauderdale.

The Orlando of Miami. Does it make any sense? Does it make any sense? It doesn't make any sense. It makes perfect sense. Anyway, so Rye writes this huge cover story about this company, Magic Leap, which is doing an augmented reality thing. Like, that's what they're doing.

So you look around the room and you see computer vision stopped. Wired agrees to call it mixed reality and not augmented reality. HoloLenza, Microsoft always asks us to call it mixed reality too, and we occasionally grudgingly do. Mixed reality is the term everyone likes, because augmented reality is the thing that you looked at through your

smartphone, and it would put Wikipedia place markers on everything. Right. We ruined augmented reality. Congratulations. We're going to call all. of it the same thing. We're going to call it all 360 Maver.

360 mixed augmented virtual reality. Our video team was just at NAB and they were, you know, we If you wasn't a show, a broadcaster show. Yeah, the big trade show for video people. And they came back very depressed that they're all going to lose the 360 versus VR

battle because everyone there just calls it VR. Like 360 video doesn't exist. Everyone just calls it VR. They're very unhappy about it. Like I got a late night text from Tom Connors that was like, I hate you, but you're going to win. I mean, that's not correct. Like, VR 360 is a subset of 360 video.

I don't, I can't do this again. We did it for an hour on the show after the photos piece. Anyway, so magically business company, they're doing mixed, augmented reality, whatever. Wired goes into right. They're doing holograms. Yeah, you wear presumably a headset and you can look around the room and like, there's videos of it. You look around the room and like screens pop up and jellyfish float.

through the air and it's enhanced. It's like, what do they say? It's like you're dreaming while you're awake. Stuff happens to reality that isn't real. I vaguely had heard somebody was saying that when you go in and you try it out for the first time, what they do is they like put you in a room and some things are holograms and some aren't and they ask you to pick out which things are real and you can't. And I have no idea if that's true or not.

I strongly suspect that it's not or it's actually very easy to pick them out. But people have very high hopes. Anyway, so why I'd wrote this piece? the piece is like 10,000 words long. It is... It's a nice, like, overview and history of... It's an overview and history of VR. VR and AR, which is MR.

I just want to... VR plus AR equals MR. I disagree with you. You might say it was like a comprehensive 360-degree retake on VR and AR and MR. I want to kill myself. Like, what's worse? This argument or letting AT&T install smart home

in your... Like, what is it? more painful way to go. Anyway, so it's very long. It's beautifully written because it's kind of calling inspired. You should read it, but the actual descriptions

of Magically-Lepe in it are insane. There's one description, and it's like, it ends with, but Magically Bluntel us how it actually works. The CEO of Magically is quoted as saying,

your brain is like a graphics processor, and we're hacking the GPU of the brain, which just doesn't make sense. Like, in a very real way, makes no sense. I mean, it makes sense, but it only makes sense in that, like, I don't know, my GP, this screen is hacking the GPU of my brain by pretending that there's a person on it, but it's actually a video. It's like, yes, everything tricks your brain. That's what things do.

Today, Addie very dramatically covered her eyes with her hand and said, I'm hacking my brain. It's super funny. I mean, it's crazy. There's a video, the video is equally crazy because the actual engineers of Magic Leap are like, we can't describe what it is. and one of them is just like, it's so real. And they all look like they are in a cult, basically. They're all talking like they're in a cult. I mean, have you been to Florida?

I mean, Dieter did they used to live there. Yeah. How are you? I also lived in Miami for a while. Are you clear? I don't know. Is that what the Scientologist did? And then today, oh, and then there was a second follow-up piece published yesterday in Wired.

Which starts with, there's, I have such a strict NDA that I can't tell you anything. Yeah. So it's like I went and visited Maggiolib, but my NDA is so hard. I can't, I literally can't write about it. But also another great writer. Another great writer. Jesse Ample is fucking amazing.

So Magic Leap has convinced this like beautiful, wonderful publication that we love to not publish anything about their visit to Magic Leap. And they did a great incredible incredible, the best of the job. They wrote around that NDA as best as any human being could possibly write around that NDA. But then today, Magic Leap just dropped, like how many patent filings? I think it's seven. And I'm unclear. I'm never.

on what's an updated filing and what's like a thing that's just being published or whatever, but seven things were pinged in my updates today. Yeah. Seven patents and they're all about like optical projection. Yeah. So they revealed what the thing is today. Or they false flagged it and this actually has nothing to do with it. Oh, they just patented it because this isn't it.

Because it's actually magic. Yeah. Yeah. I think I know what it is. Because if you go back and read older coverage when they, it's like over time they're getting more secretive. It is obviously little projectors in your eyes. It's obviously HoloLens because Kevin Kelly says it is.

Yeah. Well, no, no, no. This was the argument that you and I had earlier today. HoloLens is like a screen in front of your eyes. I think what they're doing is this light field stuff where they're actually making your eyes believe the light is coming from farther away. They're doing that with a projected screen. It's like it's a different method. Like the patent's the way I vaguely interpret them as someone who doesn't.

know much about optics, is that it's like it diffuses this, it's still projecting a thing. It goes through a wave guide, which is like a bunch of lenses. But HoloLens theoretically, it's like, okay, it projects a flat screen under your eyes. It looks good. But its perspective, magically, it can project it at different angles that will trick your brain into thinking it's at different focal lengths. So it's like the same fundamental technology. It's just applied in a way that does something different. But HoloLens doesn't fool your brain in a different focal length.

They project a flat, plain image. But they're using the same, like, fundamental method of, like, the fundamental technology. One of them is just using it to do something different. Yeah, I mean, I haven't obviously used magically, but I've used HoloLens. And, like, the holographs don't all look like they're the same distance, right? And, like, sure, they're using, they might be using different tricks, but it's not fundamentally, like, oh, garbage. Like, the only problem with HoloLens is that the field of view is too small. Right.

Oh, and, by the way, the CEO of Magically. when the HoloLens came out, went on did a Reddit AMA, where he was like, the HoloLens will burn your brain into goop. So I was going back and reading that, and it also, like, does HoloLens use stereoscopic anything? Because I'm not convinced that it does, because that's the weird thing with Magic Leap and the weird thing with Kevin Kelly's piece, is that on the one hand, they're like, oh, this thing, you know,

there's HoloLens, but this is better. But every time they directly compare it to something, it's either something like Google Glass, which obviously sucks. Or it's too stereoscopic VR, which is a literal screen in front of your eyes. it's a totally different thing. I don't know. But if you look at the few photographs, it seems like right now the thing is fixed.

They can't move because everyone has their head in a thing. So that was actually the informative piece of the follow-up thing is that when they tried it in December, it was tethered. Right. Well, tethered or a computer. I think it's fixed in place. Like, nobody even knows if it's a headset or if it's like right now a demo rack that you, like,

put your face in and like you're getting your teeth examined. Or you're going to the atometrist or something. Yeah. Who knows? I mean, it all just sounds insane. My question is there's no ship date, and they have said they don't even have a timetable to ship a thing. Yeah, it's like years out. How are they going to...

So why are they dropping all this hype right now, and how can you possibly... If you watch the demo videos, the demo videos are full of software that cannot exist. Like, just... It looks like you're in the world of a 1990s entertainment CD-ROM. Like, that's what it looks like. I don't know how else to describe that. a cool world? Is it a cool world?

It's like an E-world? Cool world. What's a cool world? A movie from the 90s? No. I was seeing a E-world, the failed Apple online service from the 90s.

Yeah. No, you know, it's like cartoons that are like live in the real world. Okay, never mind. No, I don't know what this is about it. Cool world. That's a who framed Roger Rabbit.

No. That'd be dope though. Dude. If Magically could give you who frame Roger Rabbit, I would live in the magically. I think the thing is that everything magically people are saying,

which is like, it's like magic. It would sound really great if HoloLens didn't exist. Cool world. Just knock off Roger Rabbit, by the way, if you're wondering. Got it. Like, as much as, you know, I hate the HoloLens' field of view and stuff, it already is these things, and HoloLens kind of is like magic.

Right. Like, it's amazing. It's just that they keep describing this amazing thing that kind of already exists. Like, if you kept talking about this amazing moving picture thing. Yeah. In, like, the early 1900s. Yeah, I think that's, like, the problem. It's too much technology is too familiar to people.

so when they are doing this like spirit journey vocab that they do it's like well no no tell me how it works is it glasses is it glasses like hollands is it is it a thing like the rift is it what's the computer what are the specs of the computer you need and they want to do that apple thing are you watching cool right now stars Brad Pitt and Gabriel Byrne and Kim Basinger I'm gonna watch this side away and I'm totally watching this I just think the audience is too

familiar with how technology works to get away with that bullshit Yeah, but I also just, I don't know what they can do. If I were a company that got a ton of money and had some kind of crazy idea and evolved from like a transmedia comic book company, as they did. And it was like, then three months into everyone knowing about me, Microsoft announced a thing that seemed very, very similar to the thing that I was doing and they were actually showing it to people. I don't know, and I knew I was like two years out because I'm not Microsoft.

I don't know what I would do. Yeah. And every indication is that Apple doesn't really care about VR so much as AR. So, I mean, like, all the big players are going to show up at this door and try to make something great. And, I mean, Magic Leap's thing is that it seems to be focusing way more in entertainment than I think Microsoft or any of the others. Like, they hired Neil Stevenson. They work with what a workshop, I think what a workshop. And they have all of these other crazy artistic people working for them.

And that all that, like, if you. they were just focused on making like the best holographic entertainment of all time, I think they could maybe get away with that. But all the stuff they show is operating systems. Yeah, it's really weird. They show you like checking your email. They search Snapchat's. It's like crazy.

It makes no sense to me. It's like Google Glass promo videos, like the original ones. A rough burn by Eddie Robertson. Okay, we've got five minutes left. Let's do you're letting around. Anyway, magic leap, very confusing. I'm lost. Yeah.

No, that's the thing. It's designed to lose. you. Like you read these pieces and they're like everyone's like it's like it's like doing drugs but you're sober. Granted that's how people talk about VR too. So people talk about any VR and AR thing. It is unintentionally obfuscatory. Wow that is the best word that's ever been said on the verge cast. Yeah. Opfuscit I can't up. High five. I think. Opfuscatory. Man I'm so bad at high fives. All right. That was my fault. Not your fault. lighting around.

Yeah. 400,000 Model 3 pre-orders for Tesla. For a car that no one, no one has actually seen the real interior of. Does it hack your brain? It's a hack your brain. When you're in the Tesla Model 3, it's like you're on drugs, but you're sober. If they pull off. But you're dreaming while you're awake.

If they pull off selling. No one knows how the Tesla Model 3 works. Sorry. But you're in Fort Lauderdale. If they pull off selling in eight of these by the end of 20, what is? This thing is coming out. Do you think they're in Fort Lauderdale? just to make the employees work harder at escaping Fort Lauderdale through the magic of virtual reality.

You can only leave here if you build a completely virtual environment around you. Like an inspiration technique. Yeah. Like a motivator. Yeah. It's less inspirational and more like punitive. But, you know, they're the same. Fort Lauderdale's okay.

You can only leave Fort Lauderdale if you build a complete. That's a great movie. Like a hacker race movie. You're trapped in a awful environment. but you can only leave through the internet. I love it. And you have to turn your body into a series of bits. Is that a really clear one?

Yeah. Actually, it's technically the plot of cool world. A man. No one can challenge. No one can fact-checked either on this, by the way. Every movie is the plot of cool world until someone watches the trailer. Would you order a pre-order Model 3? I have built my entire life around not owning a car, so no, but if I were ordering a car,

and I had a couple of years to wait and I was maybe planning to move in a couple years. Maybe. It seems cool. That's crazy. You don't know what you're going to want in the future. Dieter? I would not because I don't believe

that they're going to ship this on time and that if you are pre-order number 300,000, 399,000, you're not seeing your car till 2020. Unless Tesla like shocks the world with their prowess at, like, actually manufacturing things at scale. Granted, yeah, I'm, like, the only one in this room

who pre-ord an Oculus Rift. So... Do you get yours here? Where are you at on that? No, I'm in... It ordered within the first 20 minutes, and I'm in mid-May, I think. Yikes. So the point is, I'm willing to pre-order things

for reasons that may not be great. What's your favorite Oculus ship date conspiracy theory? I like the Xbox one. The one that Microsoft forgot to allocate all of the Xbox controllers. You haven't heard this one? People are like comparing serial numbers. Yeah, I have. I should not comment.

My wife works for Oculus. But I will say that, guess what? I like this. I'm not saying I think it's true. I'm just saying I like it's pretty good at making enough controllers. They're like, you can go buy a Microsoft controller pretty easy.

No, the theory is that Oculus is going to retail stores and buying controllers, right? Yeah, their argument was that they needed like giant batches of them and that Microsoft allocated all the giant batches somewhere else. And so they had to like go and try to cobble them together. It's just the massive amounts of Xbox ones they're selling to unsuspecting doves. Right?

Like, it's not like there's something else. This is a lightning round. Phones without headphone jacks. The first wave of them came out in China. Lecco put out three phones with USB C jacks only. You need USBC headphones. I think this is a stupid idea and a headphone jack is fine. Agree.

Yeah, it's miserable. But technically, I'm making my HDC 1. I made into that, so I guess I can't talk. Because you broke it. I don't know what's wrong with it. I have to turn the head. headphone jack really carefully so I can keep sound. Is that the headphones, the jack?

Or the jack at the jacket. I probably drop my phone or something. I bet it's a solder point to the jack. I'm pro jack. I don't know anyone who doesn't want a headphone jack on their phone. I mean, like. It's just such a ubiquitous piece of technology. Why take the option away?

And also for stuff that's really expensive. Like you can buy incredibly expensive headphones. Yeah. Apple's going to do this on the next phone and they're going to have some reason about how they made it thinner and it's even better quality. You're going to get amazing sound because it's all digital all the way. No, it's not. It's fundamental.

You know why? Because lightning makes no sound. It makes a fucking sound. Why do these things keep going back in this way? Xbox 360 production is over. That makes me sad a tiny little bit. Makes me sad. And I also, it worries me whenever one of these things goes out of circulation.

Like if I have a PC, I can play a game from 19. 80 something or emulate it. Yeah. Like whenever something like this happens like a little segment of games just withers and dies. Yeah. Although if you talk to Chris Cranes who later on Polygon, he has like a totally reworked Ness like Nintendo Entertainment System.

Like there's actually like crystal clear and I don't think that it's like that generation of consoles has been reworked and redeveloped several times. I'm actually very worried about the sort of like 360 PS3 generation because they're just too complicated and. And we just don't have the same level of nostalgia that will drive us to do things with them. Hopefully we will develop it. But I think there's a kind of cachet to like, oh, I work with NES systems and I do crazy things with them. Yeah.

And that no one necessarily feels that way about the 360 or at least no one who is really popular. What was the, what's the most iconic Xbox 360 game? A halo? Yeah. There's a war. Yeah, it's one of those two, right? everything else I'm thinking of is cross-platform. What's the most iconic PS3 game?

Halo. I've never been PlayStation. Like an uncharted? Yeah, I've never... Oh, Uncharted. Uncharted's a good one. What's their big exclusive franchise? Yeah.

But still, I wouldn't call that on the level I'm going to get angry emails about this. I would not put uncharted in the level of Halo. Oh, speaking of angry emails. Love an angry email. If you think that Google Play is superior to Spotify, Google Play News, Spotify. Email Neely about it

because now you can listen to the Vergecast on Google Play Music. You can. And the icon looks like a pizza. Which is very, very nice. That's a good transition. You didn't even know. You did know because you might have the run out of it. Last lightning round item. Kanye West. Unprecedented move. Reworking his already released album on streaming services

just whenever he wants. We worked out on Apple Music last week. So wild. glad I have a cassette version of the original release. Really? On my desk, yeah. Do you think that's like, is that acceptable? It's kind of like a weird idea.

It's some George Lucas shit right there. It's really weird. Yeah. It's like, I don't even like know what to, it's crazy. He's doing a lot of things right now. Always talking about Kanye. Not a moment goes by. I just had a really intense interview about him.

Really? With who? Yeah. A music writer that I'm interviewing for a story. I'll ask you a question. When you publish a story direct, Yeah. How long has to elapse before you don't feel comfortable updating it?

So if I publish a story to The Verge. Oh, if there's like, there's like, there's like, there's like, there's like, yeah. Well, TK's typos, like, I think those, you can fix those whenever, right? I publish a story and I'm like, oh man, I wish I just deleted that sentence. And if it's the first three to five minutes, I'll be like, whatever, I can just like update it. Like, no one's seen it yet. It's not part of the record. It's more than five minutes, I start to feel really.

antsy. I'm like, if I update this story in this way, I got to go, I got to put an update at the bottom. Yeah. There's a correction. I agree. Like a couple of minutes. It's touchy. That's really touchy. Right? Yeah. Kanye had that record out for like three weeks and just went back and changed it. But he doesn't have any like, it's not like someone's asking him about uphold an ethics policy. You know what I mean? Like he doesn't know anyone. It's just the nature of like digital media means that you can and no one in music has ever thought that they should. And so, yeah, it's the integrity of artistic, artistic work. Right.

That's why we keep talking about this man. I can't get rid of him. Because he keeps doing stuff to talk about. Yeah. No, I think it's just crazy that the idea that he's like, this isn't a malleable thing. The idea that people are suing him because he tweeted that it would never be on Apple and then it is is amazing. Do you know this? There's like at least two class action suits against Kanye West because he tweeted that it would only ever be on title and never on iTunes.

So everyone sent up her title and he put it out of it. It's the saddest. And I want to pay for a month. It sucked because I didn't cancel in time. If you didn't realize that after it was over and after the curve went down, but I didn't want to wait. I was like ready. You didn't wait.

You bought it on cassette. But theoretically, I didn't buy it. Every game developer then because the, it's not coming to this platform. Oh, it is coming to this platform thing seems pretty much standard. Well, I've been looking to start a lucrative garbage class action lawsuit business. Yeah.

It works. I can get every one of you $0.26 and 30% off your next video game purchase if you give me millions of dollars in lawyer fees. There's really a planet money or freaking I'mawks podcast on class action from the past couple weeks. You should listen to it. Go find it. You'll find it. My take is the new reason to like buy music isn't to like have a library or feel like you own a thing or whatever. It's because you don't trust streaming service fuckery. Yeah. Like I just, I went looking for a song I wanted to listen to that was stuck in my head randomly.

by Ben Lee. It's an album called Breathing Tornadoes. Terrible. Not good. But like the couple of songs I really like that were like were important to me way back when. And it's just like not around. But I happen to have bought it and like uploaded it to like a Google Play Locker. So like I could listen to it. And I'm realizing that for stuff that I really, really like, I'm going to start buying it because I don't trust Apple or Spotify or title or Google to like hang on to license. for it in perpetuity. Yeah. And this is the argument for piracy.

Yeah. That piracy will preserve everything forever. Man, I got to find this article. There was definitely an article when I was like, when Napster first started hitting in college, I read this article about this guy in New Jersey who had set up an entire room of his house because he had become inspired by the idea that he would, he alone would preserve the world's content. Yeah.

And he was like running up these massive power. and his wife was like, what are you doing upstairs? And he just had like tower PC after tower PC downloading everything that he could. Whoa. They got to find it. It's like an ancient piece. But like there's like a, there's like a cabal of these people who believe this. It's amazing.

Well, I think with books like this has been proven absolutely worthwhile that like there are so many weird orphan works that no one is ever going to do anything with. And they just disappear. Right. Google Books is actually an amazing service for this. Yeah. They won. Well, they won by default. default.

The Supreme... It's a really bad Simpsons reference. The Supreme Court didn't take up the Google Books case. So Google just wins. I have things been going on for like a decade.

Yeah. So the Authors Guild sued Google about scanning 10 million books for Google books. It got all the way to Supreme Court. Supreme Court said, whatever. Basically, Google's fine.

Yeah. Notably, like, you cannot access these anywhere. Their whole argument is, like, you can look at them in libraries that have the book. or you can get them with some kind of, if the author agrees to put them up or something like that.

But yeah, they were upset about just the scanning of it. Yeah. It's funny, Google one, well, one, default one. Their Google Books case, the same week that the EU cracked on them for Android. I'm sure they would prefer the Android whenever the Google Books win. Okay, that was Vergeast. Deter, do you want to run through our engagements? You can follow us in all sorts of places.

On Snapchat Reverge, you should. rated us five stars on iTunes. You will also find other lovely Verge podcast. You'll find What's Tech with Chris Plant. You'll find Verge ESP

with Emily Oshita and Elizabeth Lopato. And you can also find other great Fox Media podcasts. Rico's got a couple of great podcasts. They've got a whatever they got. They got Recode, Decode, Keraswisher. There's a Recode Media

and Kafka. Too embarrassed to ask. To embarrass to ask with Lauren Good. And special guests on all those shows. It's always really fun to listen to. on verge, on Twitter. We're on Theverge.com.

We're on Twitter. We're on some other places, too. And we're on Google Play now. That's a podcast. So you should go check us out there. Google Play Music, the best music service out there. It did it. It looks like a pizza.

Also, I'm just going to say this. Next week on The Verge, going to be bonkers. You are going to lose your mind. If you're a Verge class listener, you want to go check out what's happening on theverge.com on Monday. You don't like it. It's going to be great. I'm just going to give a hint. Can I give one hint?

No. One hit. All right, fine. I'm buying a neon sign. Yeah, it's true. That's good hint. Is that it? Paul.

Paul. Rock and roll. Goodbye.