The Vergecast - Reunion

Episode Date: April 7, 2016

Happy 200! Hear the uncut and unscripted episode featuring Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and special guests Joanna Stern, Paul Miller, Chris Ziegler, and Ross Miller as they reminisce about the early days of The Verge and also talk tech news today. This is an episode you don't want to miss! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Verchcast is brought to you by Cesar Vodka, which is a vodka brand that I've made up, and that I will continue to pretend reading ads for at the beginning of Vurchast until someone gives me money to make it real. Cizzer Vodka got through the night. If you're listening, we have a Cizzer Vodka prop. It's a beautiful. It's a spray-painted gold. I'm sorry, it's a gold bottle.

It's got a wire frame scissor. Yeah, this is very nice. Green logo on the top. I'm going to say this forever. Anyway. It's inside job. I think so. Don't worry about it.

What if there are a vodka called Cizzer? Is it a joke from someplace else? All right. No jokes, Neely. No jokes. I feel like I've hurt. You've definitely pitched me on Cizzer Vodka at some point in our life. Look, here's what I'm going to tell you.

It's the 200 episode of the show. It is also in a quirk of timing almost exactly five years since all of us started quitting our jobs to start the verge, which is crazy. So in honor of all of that, I've assembled an all-star. our roster of verge OGs on the show today. So Paul Miller is here. Hi. Paul. Vergecast listeners might remember Paul as Paul as Paul how's it going with that name pronunciation? Paul. It's getting better. Joanna Stern is here. Just Joanna. It's like I invite you on the show and then you bring this vibe every time. What vibe? You're like I don't it's the I don't know. Joanna. I'm not going to talk to you're still really far away from the

microphone. No, I'm not. All right. Chris Sigler's here. You got to talk into the microphone. He's not, it's an audio show. He's so far away from the microphone. Hi.

I just want to, I just want to point out that through, through a payroll quirk, I actually never quit and gadget. That would really be amazing. Ross Miller is here. You might also know me as Paul. Yeah, you might know me as Paul. Is that Paul on the Vergecast? Yeah.

And then, uh, Dieter Ben is here. Hello. Hello. We, the only people. Not special. Dieter, the correct distance away from the microphone. Yeah. Not immediately bringing the show down.

No, no gimmicks. Yeah, no gimmicks, no hats. You see what you get. You're just calm, professional. You get what you see. Is that a burn? Is that a compliment? No, it's, he's, the quietest man in tech.

Oh my God. Yeah. All right. So here's what I thought we'd do. We got a show. We got all the OGs back in town. It's the 200th episode. I kind of want to do a thing that we've never.

done before which is behind the music yeah which is go behind music so Joanna when did you become addicted to drugs well that's what's in here right yeah it's a gold tube of drugs I don't think you're supposed to definitely don't want to do what you're gonna we have hats and sparklers it's uh it's silly no let's talk about it so we were all except for Dieter Teter isn't smartphone experts you're supposed to just shake you're also not supposed to talk over each other well that's not how it used to be. It is and we're way more professional now as evidenced by the fake

vodka ad, the immediate talking over each other and Chris lying about still taking a patron from AOL. So the most of us were... I mean be honest though you probably still have one or two laptops at Aowel gave you. I have I have like you know television's

laptops you name it. Ross you have my lawyer's advised me not to actually speak to the matter. Unfortunately I'm Ross's lawyer. It's a very confusing situation. No it's talk about it. So five years ago, the Verge did not exist. The name didn't even exist. We were all

still working at AOL five years ago at Engadget. I actually have Engadget on March 7th, 2011 open on my computer right now. Let me read you some headlines. Let me read the work that we were producing five years ago. Joanna Stern. The Sony Vios

arrives stateside. Brings along an advanced extended battery. I don't want to hear about this. Oh, you were worried Sony wasn't going to release its new VOS ultra-portable the US. Okay, so it has taken the company a bit longer to prep the 13.3 inch laptop for its American debut. But it was, it's here and it was well worth the wait.

Let me see, let me see a picture of this, of this laptop. Do you remember this laptop? Yeah, that thing was well worth the weight. It was not. That thing had a terrible plastic. That definitely was well worth the, yeah. We got Thomas Ricker writing about Windows phone mango, which was going to miss its 2011 target.

Question mark. Updated. We got Vlad writing about the Samsung Galaxy Pro with a 2.8. inch touchscreen over a portrait cordy that still looks like an amazing phone to me yeah it really does portrait cordy for life let's see except uh glad again the o droid a tablet fits a 1366 66 by 768 red screen on 10 inch display the dual core exonos inside a transparent trail not a zyboard not zyboard's right and Chris I reviewed the zyboard for the break in some news the sprint website put up a page for the nexus listening is coming soon

I think this is before the Galaxy Nexus Right right right No Nexus S Yeah So this is where we were five years ago We were like Samsung's We were hardcore gadget blogging Yep and we were doing really well

I would say dare say we were the best gadget blogging in the world Yes I mean it was Austin Giz right I just want to point out Ross just went Yeah We were trying We did our best We weren't the best

but we did our best. We were the best try hard gadget blog in the world. So it's super clear I wasn't at Engadgett. And so as an objective external observer of the gadget blog wars, and Gadget was the best. Nice. You didn't think you were the best? I wasn't running a gadget blog per se.

I was running a bunch of smartphone communities, which included gadget blogs or weren't solely gadget blogs. But any day that I managed to beat NGadget to a piece of new, I felt very, very good. Anytime I managed to get a link from Engadgett for some news that I had personally broken, I also felt very, very good. Yeah.

I mean, it was... Oh, yeah, the links were the thing. I just want to check my... How sharp I am still. Yeah. 1366 by 768 WXGA. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. Every netbook. I mean, this is about his old school as a podcast that you can get. Anyway, so then Paul and Josh and I were hosting Engadgetter podcast, which was great. we had the Engadgett show. We were doing great.

It was like a good time. And then we asked, well, then AOL became AOL. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then this is a part that nobody knows. We developed in secret a plan to leave AOL. Nobody knows that. Yes.

And we started a website, which nobody knows about, called The Verge. Right. Well, we first, actually, first, after we left InGadgett, we, um, were all hired suspiciously quickly by Vox Media. No, it wasn't as as BN as BNASB Nation.

As reported by Kerasp. Sports blogs Nation. Sports blogs incorporated. Yeah. Well, again, I am still an AOL employee. And we started

This is My Next. We started this is my next. I think this is my next is actually the best gadget blog of all time. Oh, it was great. Solid. It had some real. The best thing about this is my

was it was just blogging. You know, we didn't have, like, anything. Right. We had only a word, we had a WordPress blog. Yep, no editors, no copy editors, no spell check. And a laptop. That's it. We didn't even have power.

China's like, you had a solar cell. I went to Paul, I used to go to Paul Miller's apartment to steal his power. And then he lost power. And we had no power. Well, no. Before we started this in my next, we actually, so we all quit. We had our independent blogs. And we quit.

Watching all of you quit, it was like, oh, yeah. It wasn't, it wasn't as sly as we thought. It was not sly at all. Well, I was reading some, like, business insider coverage of us quitting yesterday, which is insane. Because there's a lot of it. Like, it was, like, AOL bought TechCrunch. Michael Errington used to, like, write nasty shit about us about Engadgett, buying ads that real blogs don't do. Yeah, there was, there was like a war.

It's crazy. yeah well and like there'd be articles and business insider being like how long will the engadget editors last how long will they take it it's crazy um but that wasn't actually it's funny about it is that had nothing to do with it like actually can we can we talk about can we talk about paul miller's extremely salty post what he left oh yeah which is gone now i was looking for you you deleted it paul wrote maybe the greatest mic drop i'm quitting this place post of all time when he left it i didn't delete it It's just link raw.

I need to put it back up. I made my own WordPress blog called Paul Miller or something like that. And I wrote something called Leaving AOL, which, speaking of TechCrunch, TechCrunch wrote a scathing review of my, is like five rules for stunt resignation post that I broke all of them. But basically, there was a scuttlebut around AOL, this thing called the AOL way. Yes. Oh, right, right. which was going to be this new directive for content that was all based on SEO and traffic optimization and chasing trends and had nothing to do with, with writers producing quality stuff that they're interested in.

It was just all suits, you know, turning writers into drones. And I had a lot of reasons for leaving, including to start the verge eventually. But I thought the AOLA perfectly encapsulated what a big media company like AOLA, could do to screw up a beautiful thing like Engadgett and so I wrote about how I hated it yeah it's funny Dieter and I read the AOL way again this morning yeah we did we did because it's it's on business inside like business inside an admirable job of covering this thing did the AOL way ever happen though it did in some place about I don't think it ever hit Engadgett and I think Engadgett continues to this day to be like its own special butterfly um uh but we read it this morning and it's like now five years in

We run the place and we're like, oh, this actually describes media business, but like if an alien had come to Earth and was like, here's how media businesses work. They publish stories and put advertising next to them and then think how much the stories are worth and then try to figure out what people are interested in. And it had nothing to do with journalism. Right. It was like a very, it's like fascinating. They literally in this document schedule out all of the meetings that everyone in the company should have every day and what everyone should be doing. It was called the town meeting cadence. And Gadget was in a part of the company known as Techtown.

I sat there. Yeah, I sat in Tech Town. You could sit in Tech Town? There were physical real estate. There were signs above our heads. Did they have like, what's the plane mobile like furniture? Like, was it actually made to look like a Tech Town? No, no, it was made to, like, corporate office building.

It was really like Christmas Town with elves? I think it was like Richard B. Scary kind of design. That's what I was. Yeah. Thank you. Anyhow, this is ridiculous. I can't even imagine. Can you imagine being like, the town concept lasted for like five seconds.

Right. Like they rolled it out and I'm pretty sure Tim Armstrong was like, I'm the CEO of a major American corporation and I just told everyone that our company is basically a country and they run towns. And that's the metaphor I'm going with. And he was like, no. And that the heads of departments are mayors. Yes. What?

No. Yep. We had a mayor. What if you wanted to be unincorporated? It was like a village. Like a city? Yeah, I don't want your damn plumbing. It was ridiculous.

So, like, all this is happening. They rolled out this plan. We couldn't get new investment. We couldn't hire anybody. We were having a hard time upgrading the site. It was, like, a big stuff. You couldn't hire me. I tried to hire Dieter.

We could tell this story. I met Deeter at Build when Windows phone was coming out. I remember that the old time and gadget verge people will know this. When Windows phone first came out, they unveiled it. And then for like a month, all they would say is you'll find out more at build.

Yeah. Yeah, was that in Las Vegas? Yes. It was in Vegas. It was in Vegas. For a month, like, literally, you'd be like, hey, is that, is this screenshot accurate? And they'd like, you'll find out more at build. Like, crazy.

Like, is this a puppy? Like, you'll find out more at build. So I went to build to cover it. You and I were staying at the four seasons for some reason. Can I just point that out? Oh, we were? What? Because we worked at and gadget.

AOL, yes, AOL always put us up at the most insane hotels. So Neil and I were at the four seasons. No, not Ross and I. Ross, remember we went to... Oh, in Germany? Hamburg. Yeah, yeah. Leedsday, I think.

Hanover. Hanover. We went to Hanover, and I think I actually was killed. I mean, I was taking Scalibur and, like, happy. Yeah. Yeah. No, we were from four seasons, and quite frankly, the room service was atrocious. No, by the end at AOL, the expense process had been so whittled the way that I could just

log directly into SAP and type in numbers. I was like, sure. It was ridiculous. It was like the last days of disco. Like the most decade. Anyway, so we were at build. I met Dieter, full disclosure. Dieter and I got very drunk.

Yeah. And I was like, we should come working and gadget. And then went back to AOL, like, flew home. Yeah. And Deeter was like, sent me an email. I was like, love to take you up on that offer. And I was like, hey, can we hire someone? And AOL was like a roar of voices screaming no.

Yeah. And I was so embarrassed that I didn't talk to Dieter again for a long. Seriously, I could just, I'm like, oh yeah, you know, here's like, I'd like to work. What's the deal? And they're like, yeah, cool. I'd like to work. And then stop talking to me. I like to work. I didn't reply to emails, just went totally radio silent. I was super embarrassed. I assumed I'd done something horribly wrong.

Well, we were very drunk. Just like, you're ridiculously drunk. Anyway, but then we were all quitting and we were thinking about how do we expand our team. And Dieter, literally the first person that we called. literally the first person we hired. But tell your story, Dieter. Deeter has a story, a deep, dark. I don't think the listeners...

I don't know if I'm allowed to tell the story. I might technically be under NDA. The company doesn't exist. Okay, so I went out to interview for this job. By then, this is my next had launched. And I actually had two interviews. One was to talk to Josh Tupolski about coming to this as my next. And the other one was to go be a PR executive

at Palm. And the... You made the wrong decision. Yeah. The interview with Josh, I met him at a... What if he had done there and saved Palm? We would all be happier, better people. Yeah.

The interview of Josh was at a San Francisco bar. I met him at like 12.30 at night, and we talked till like three in the morning. And then I drove back down to Sunnyvale and then had to wake up to be at, at Palm at 8 o'clock to start those interviews, and that ran for like six hours, because it's like a standard corporate, you know, gamut. What's the word? Gauntlet. Gauntlet.

Right. And then I had to choose between those two jobs. There are no, there's nobody left in there. And I took the crazy risky. No, I'm saying he had to interview then with 15 people. The job you literally chose, this is my next over Paul. I took the, I took the risky bet. I bet on the crazy startup that would probably fail instead of the big safe corporate job.

What was the last thing they had gone? Just expected. They hadn't launched the touchpad or Vee or yet. They had? No, they had launched the touchpad. Yeah, Touchpad, Free 3. Then they had launched pretty much everything they were always going to launch forever, never. Yes, the last, no, they put out the pre-3.

They put out the pre-3 in, like, Europe for like a minute, and then they canceled the whole thing. So that would have been what you would have gotten to work on if you had taken up. No, I was going to work on webOS as a platform, not on hardware. Oh, no. That would have been also the last thing you were going to work on. The day I knew I was going to leave AOLI. was the touchpad launch event because I was live blogging it

and we were beating everybody in coverage because we were very good at beating everybody in coverage. Because my website crashed and I was live blogging by sending AOL instant messages to my boss back in Florida so that he could hand code them in HTML and put it on precentral.com. Virgo Gs.

No, so I was like live blogging, da-da-da. And I don't remember who's sitting next to me and they leaned over and they looked at the site and they were like, cool belly fat ads on a gadget. And I had spent the entire week before that pleading with the company, like, don't run

garbage ads on event. Like, don't run them ever, but like, particularly when we know there's like an influx of eyeballs don't run belly fat ads and I got, just don't do it. And I got everyone's support and they promised me what was going to happen and it totally happened. I sent this furious email. I was like, this just happened. And like, we turned him

off and did it again. We're still there. And I was like, I just want you guys to know that a competitor literally leaned over while I was beating him to check what he was missing. and told me and made fun of the ads on the site. Like, this is awful. And I got this reply from an AOL executive that was like, we win as a team.

And I was like, dude, my team is fucking winning. What is your team doing? And I was like, I looked at Josh and Josh was like, yeah, we should quit. I was like basically the day we're at the door. Paul, what, no, Joanna. What was your exit story? I just left. Yeah, he was bailed.

No drama. I don't, Joino wasn't. I wasn't a full one. Yeah. I mean, that was one of the reasons, you know, Josh was so angry for many years there. I worked there for two years with you guys and you could never, he could never hire me full time. Yeah. Because AOL didn't want to have, or you guys didn't have headcount.

So I was a freelancer and would make like, you know, a chunk of change every month and I would save my money for taxes and pay my own insurance and stuff like that. It's actually, it's a good experience looking back on it because it's like, I think many people who just graduate from college now get a job and they're like, oh, my money. just that's where it goes. Yeah. So, yeah, life. Do you still save a chunk of money for, like, other things? Like, now, now I mean, now I make more money. Break down your monthly money.

Now I make more money than then. So, yeah, like, well, you guys were all full time. And I mean. No, Chris wasn't. You weren't full time either. I remember, so I have two great things about Chris. When I went, the first day I interviewed it Engadgett, Ryan Block was like, oh, there's this guy, Chris.

He lives near you in Chicago. And Chris took me for a drink. And he was like, well, it's nice to meet you. Most people don't make it. I'll see you later. I was traumatized because we had just fired like three people in the stand of like three months. I was like, I'm going to be real with you. He's like, most people don't last.

So that was that. And then the second one was when I was taking a full-time job, when I was quitting a lawyer, a full-time job. I went out for a drink with Chris. And he's like, I don't know, man. A-WL sounds like a lot of bullshit. That was right. Right.

But Chris, where were you? Yeah, my exit was basically like, then they, when everyone was starting to leave. I was one of the last to actually give the notice. They preemptively said, oh, we have a full-time opening for you. And guess what? Actually, we have a lot of money. That's because it just freed up. Right.

There was money. There was a full-time job. There was benefits. Yeah. We've been ARL all along. Yeah. There was an actual laptop. I think they tried to bribe me with a laptop because I never had a company issued laptop.

They were going to assign three elderly people's dial-up accounts directly to funding you. To funding me. You were thinking like 29.95 a month. Josh gave me, I think he like allotted me some extra money one month to buy my own laptop to work there because I couldn't get like company stuff. I mean that I will say this was like the thing that enraged us all in. Yeah. Anyway, where were you before? It was Joanna's fault.

Well, yeah, I was never interested in working full time at AOL. That was not something that intrigued me. Chris, what's that watch band? Oh, this is the new Apple watch band. It's pink? Yeah, it's awesome. Comes in multiple colors. So I did the math, and I was like, I'm making enough per post so that I should just

write like 100 posts a day. Yep, I did that math every day. Every morning I did that math. Yeah. And so that's why I quit and gadget with something like 11,000 posts. It's because I was just grinding. You really did write a lot. Yeah.

Well, I was never going to beat Shockey. on Murph, but... Machine gun, machine gun, By the way, Darren Murf, now the editor of TechRadar. Yes, that's true. That's true. But yeah, so I was, of course,

a programmer before I was a writer, and in college, I actually went through the one engineering program where I didn't have to write a single thing. I didn't write a single line of anything in college and hated writing, and then turned out it was actually okay at it, as Ryan Block discovered.

So here I am. Yeah. So that was more of a quit your promising other career. Yeah. Try this crazy last career. And here I am. Ross also wrote a mic drop post. Yeah, I did. But after Paul did his, I was like, I'm just not going to compete.

I can't do that. So I just kind of redirected it to Paul's and said, just confused it too. Yeah. So then we were out and then we had to like come up with the name. I remember one. All of you said that it wasn't the AOL way. All of your mic drop post were like, it's not the AOL way. And I was reading.

I was like, yeah. Yeah, I know. It wasn't. So we just winked at it. It isn't. It isn't. It wink. Yeah, it wasn't imposed on us. Yeah.

Because that wasn't a thing. But the AOL way was indicative of what AOL was about as a company. It was a philosophical concern over how the mothership would like treat journalism. Right. And also there are people who were going to stay there. Right. So if we had been like the AOL way came to a gadget were out, those people would have been screwed. Yeah.

Yeah. And it turns out they were in the end because the AOL fired them all. That happens. media companies. Now, now AOL is going to, you know, they're going to Verizon. Verizon owns AOL.

They're going to buy Yahoo. That's the rumor today. Do you hear Ms. Joanna? That what? Verizon's going to buy Yahoo! Yeah, I heard something about this. Yahoo AOL. It's a circle of life.

It's bizarre. I mean, David Pogue. Yeah, exactly. What happens to the tech coverage there? It's crazy. Anyway, this is like very inside baseball. But it's a 200 episode. If you're going to do it, this is the episode

to do it on. Yeah, the two O's could be like a baseball. They're inside stuff. So Paul, where you're in? I got to go. I understand where these four people have been, but you two are the OGs who flew the coop. Joanna's behind a paywall. We never seen it.

I'm actually not. I'm not behind a paywall. I'm not behind a paywall. Please, please click the links. Just watch some videos, just read some articles. Scroll around some photos. I did just click on one of your links just a second. Yeah, no paywall.

You clicked it off at Twitter, though. You can get to some stuff for the journal. I don't know. That Google trick is not working for getting through the paywall anymore. No, they closed it up. That's crazy. For the record, I'm a paying Wall Street Journal subscriber, Joanna. My money goes directly into your pocket.

Thank you, Chris. You're welcome. For the record, Chris is a paying Wall Street Journal account and I stole his password. Really. Get the most out of it. While I was off the internet, I had a paper Wall Street Journal subscription that my brother bought me, but it was addressed to Paul Pillar. Wow.

Actually, you should talk about being off the internet, because I think that a lot of our new listeners have no idea what you're talking about. I spent a year without using the internet. All right, cool. When I got back, I was really bad at using the internet, and I couldn't quite keep up with the verge pace. and had some other stuff I wanted to do. So I quit the Verge like a few months after I got back. I got back in March of 2013, I think,

and then quit in June after E3. But you wrote for... Explain how you wrote for The Verge while you were off the Internet. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So while I was off the Internet, the Verge still paid me. And I would write articles and put them on a thumb drive

and give them to an editor to be published. So I have a lot of great personal essays about my life and my quirky thoughts all about the world all at the verge it's called offline is what the series was it was great and it was not behind a paywall not behind a paywall you know yeah i didn't want to say also not available offline i didn't want to break this early but um for fifth birthday the verges fifth birthday in november we were actually going to put in a paywall nice it's going to have right and it's only going to be old paul and joanna stuff for some of that.

What was your favorite virtually thing that you ever did? Do you want it? My Zyboard review? You know what's funny is that if you say the word Zyboard we put the tablets on a skateboard. I gotta find this. Because you don't remember that? I remember that.

I don't. I don't know. And that's where I really began my future as using props to illustrate. Which is truly my claim to fame and some days I worry I will come, I will no longer have any props to use that are new. Yeah, I mean, I will say that what you're doing at the Wall Street Journal right now is truly next level. Thank you.

I mean, I don't, like, is the journal ready for it? Like, when you publish your video in the morning, does the whole newsroom shut down and be like, what did you get up to this time? Sometimes that happens. Yes, they just halt all news production globally around all bureaus in the world. But, no, I mean, I really am running out of props. I mean, I didn't think I would ever be able to beat the Blackberry and the piece of cheese. That was really good. That was amazing.

I think that's right. I really got the inspiration. Yeah, for the passport. Yeah. Which is shape. Still people very angry about that. What shaped like a piece of cheese? I don't know, man.

How do you get mad about shapes? But what's uncanny about it is that it's perfect. It's not close. Yeah, it's perfectly. Yeah, it's perfectly. Like, they definitely planned around that. Yeah. Same measurements as it.

When they looked at the same measurements as a piece of craft cheese. So let's talk. So Blackberry brings up, by the way, this picture of the zibords on a skateboard is one of the best things. I look at all of our original verge stuff. All these ideas that we thought were brilliant. Our videos, Joanna,

when, like, Joanna and Billy making the first set of video reviews. But that was. That was like next jet. Like, it was at the time. It is at the time.

And I look at this picture of tablets on a skateboard now and I'm like, what the fuck were we thinking? No, I look at that and say, what weren't they thinking? Yeah. They thought of everything, including this photo.

It's a great photo. No, but it's funny. You look at the stuff from back then. I mean, the photo's not good. The photo is not good. The photo.

was bad. Yeah, I know. All my photos are really bad. Joanna, that's ultimately why we had to let you go. But really, my photos were always really bad, and I apologize for that.

Yeah. Sometimes Ross would take my photos. Those are even worse. Can you imagine an Android tablet review in this day and age getting 104 comments? Yes. I just don't see it.

So that's what I want to talk about now. Look at those charts. I handmade those charts. Yeah. With my coding. If you handmade... A chart now. Handmade charts now, our producting would kill you.

They would literally come down there. It's just a table. It's a supported HTML element. I made that. With my hands. Software is supposed to do that. Do you still stand by the 6.0 score? It's a brutal score. I actually think it probably should have been lower.

Yeah, I agree. Oh, man. Oh, you were rough in this conclusion. That is ultimately that these eyeballs are not worth the cash. their pricing is just out there as their names. It's profound. They're a good piece of hardware, despite the button and expandable storage issues. With software, it's decent,

but held back by an ecosystem. I just want to put it out there, even in the early days, just railing on bad ecosystems. Also, Android tablet ecosystem? Not better. Still not better. That's amazing to me.

I think you're trying to pivot to talk about the current state and the future. One thing that has never changed is the Android tablet software ecosystem. It just hasn't. So we talked about Blackberry. Back then, like, I'm looking at our site when we were leaving and gadget in that middle

zone, we, we were able to do gadget coverage in a way that is very difficult to do now, right? The big companies were at the top of their games for that second. So Microsoft was trying to launch a new phone ecosystem. It was very exciting. Android was very exciting and all the harbor maker. HTC was an exciting company back then. Yeah. And now they make the vibe, so I guess they're like medium exciting.

I don't know. Apple was, it hadn't reached its set of dominance in mobile. There was just stuff going on all the time in these zones. Blackberry was blackberry. Still relevant. What's going on now? Yeah, they were just failing then. Give me, give me, so we've done enough past.

I saw someone using a Blackberry phone on the subway. Were they, how were they? I mean, do they work for the government? He was wearing a. Yeah, they all do. Jared has a Blackberry. Do you have a journal Blackberry? I don't have one anymore.

No? No. You had one for a minute. You were really into it the last time I saw it with it. When I worked at ABC, I had another Blackberry, and I actually was really into it. And then when I moved to the journal, it was actually very hard for me not to have a Blackberry. But now I'm full touchscreen all the time. Yeah.

Touching things. Screen stuff. Wait, so Joanna, you wrote a column this week. This actually fits in. Yeah. You were like smartphones are boring, but now they're going to get good again. And there's something else is going to happen. Yeah.

Think about what you wrote. Well, it's funny because we think about back at that time, what year was that? I think we're... This is 2011. Yeah, so, like, we're actually talking, like, what, 2010? Or, like, when did Motorola launch the droid? When did Nexus, when did Google launch the Nexus? The original nine.

The first droid was 2009. And then the Nexus... The Nexus One. Was it the first next? Nexus one was the first one, and that was the following year. And we was like, oh, my God, Google's going to sell first correctly. It's a Google phone. And then the Nexus was Samsung.

Nexus S was Samsung. And the one right after was the Galaxy Nexus. Anyway, we would make a huge deal about those launches. Like, I remember if I was sent, like, I was one of the ones selected to go live blog, one of those, I was like super nervous because there were going to be a ton of eyeballs watching the press. I mean, Vlad and I specifically this one that we did in Hong Kong. Which one was that? Galaxy Nexus. It was the Galaxy Nexus.

That one was a botch, remember? They told us at the last minute that you guys had to go to Hong Kong. Right, but it was huge. Like, we had huge numbers just from the hands-on and from, there was so much excitement around phones. Didn't you guys sneak in ahead of the time? Yeah, we snuck in, we got it. You fucked them all, remember.

Oh! No one gets that, you know? Whenever Joanna got a scoop at Engadgett or the early verge, she would just write into IOC, we fucked them all. Which then Ross made a picture of a robot fucking them all. Which I did find the other day. I will share that to the team. But like we were so, and it wasn't just us.

I mean, we were covering it, and that was actually one of the best things, right? We were so excited about what we were covering. But our audience was so excited about it. And people, it was just like the early days of people actually being able to get great smartphone technology. The cameras were being upgraded. The screens were getting better. Android software was getting better. Obviously the iPhone was doing its own thing.

And it's like now it's, what, eight years, seven years? Yeah. Maybe less. And it's sort of like, eh, it's just like, you know, when there's a new phone

that's announced, it's like, mm, yeah, that's good. When you would buy a new Android phone every year back then, like you,

or even a new iPhone every year back then, you knew that you were getting something that was like markedly better and you would notice it and feel it and it would like make your life better. Now, like getting a new phone over a year, that improvements are not as like,

holy crap in your face. And that, the Galaxy, the Nexus 7, not the Nexus 7. The Nexus, it was just the Nexus, right? The Samsung. There was the Nexus S, and then there was a Galaxy Nexus.

The Galaxy Nexus, right. The Galaxy Nexus. I bought that. Yeah, I bought that phone. It was my first phone after the droid 2. I bought, like, I had the droid 2. Yeah. The droid 2 is my first phone after the BlackBerry,

and I thought it was the craziest best thing ever. Then I got the Nexus, and I thought it was the craziest best thing ever. At that time, it was like, what size was the screen? Four inches? Yeah, yeah. It feels so. Tiny down. Yeah, and it was so crazy.

It was like so big. Like, oh, people were looking at me. How do you put that in your pocket? Oh my gosh. You know, like, and yeah, exactly. Now there are these phone announcements and we're kind of just like, and that's pretty much a lot of categories. Even this week, you know, HP announced this new really thin laptop and I was like, that's,

we're dealing with like the Deladamo all over again. Yes, it looks like the Adamo. You know, it's like, it's like, uh, I don't know. I don't want to sound jaded. I don't want to sound like ungrateful of. all of this great progress, but we're sort of hit this point in the major gadget refresh cycles that things sort of have tapered off. And there's a lot of good technology, I think that's going to be coming. But right now it's been a lot of refinement.

I mean, from my perspective, I have not been writing about gadgets day to day for years now. And it's just felt to me like everything's good enough. Exactly. It's exactly right. You know, as soon as Apple made a laptop where, I mean, they were good at the track pads, and then they solved battery life. And I could work all day on a laptop without plugging it in. And the phone is great. It's got a great camera. It just works. I love the cracks on yours. Yeah, well, that's a problem.

Yeah. But, no, totally. Yeah, the dissatisfactions with phones feel like, well, you know, like my sister has a cracked phone too. And it's like, well, I don't have an upgrade right now. I'll have the money for it. You know, there's like external. I mean, there are such a huge, important part of our lives. They're not boring in that sense.

Right. Totally. Take it over our lives and it's super important. But a new addition of it doesn't change my life because the current edition is so good. Right. And that was like the basis of my iPhone success review, which is like, this is a great phone. What happens from here? And we all have these like complaints, but they're not big complaints.

They're like, I need more storage. I need some more battery life. You know, they don't, I mean. So I disagree, and it's funny, the second half of your column is you, like, predicting all the stuff that's going to be cool. And I hope it, I hope it comes. So what do you think is cool that's coming?

I mean, I think wireless charging, like true wireless over-the-air charging, if it does not fry our brains like a microwave, it's going to be completely awesome and change everything. That's, like, the piece of technology in that column that I think is the most, like, cool and, completely altering component.

I mean, there's a lot of other cool things like screens and, you know, modular design and things like that. I don't know how much of that is going to change things,

but... So my big theory, and Joanna laughs with me about this. Every year at CSX. Yes, right, they're back. Gadgets are back.

Because I think the phones have gotten boring, and that means the investment and the dollars and the interest has to go somewhere else, and you're seeing all these little bits and bobs of that everywhere.

So like drones, for example, drones are fucking really interesting and great and they can fly themselves now. And we like yesterday, Ben Popper, if you know the noise of Phantom makes, and I know it very well because I flew a drone at my friend Dieter's wedding, my best friend, the drone, not Deeter. You flew your best friend into a wedding. The drones got married and Deeter flew through the air. It's very confusing.

But like I heard that noise like, do-da-d-d-d-it. The Phantom makes when boots up. And I was like, that is the most exciting noise. Like, it's really cool what they can do. All the Internet of Things stuff is mostly garbage. That Wi-Fi wine bottle. That Wi-Fi wine bottle. But some of it's really interesting.

Some of it's really cool. Right. Well, like, the Echo and the technology that's going into that kind of stuff, which arguably could be, you know, the smartphone is at the core of some of that is awesome. Yeah. Right? And VR.

I think that's the other one. And VR is built on smartphone parts. I could actually make a pretty strong case that the Wi-Fi wine bottle is a super interesting and culturally important product. Get it. I agree completely. Please state your opinion, so I may concur. Wow. I'm looking it up.

A little formal there. There's this wine bottle, but it's actually just a sleeve. It has a tiny computer and a tiny touchscreen, and you can stick wine pods into it. The cartridges. Cartridges. And there's this new trend. There's the Wi-Fi wine bottle. There's the juicerro, which only lets you use, like, pre-packaged juice bags.

Jucerra's the dumbest thing in the world. No, but they're both Wi-Fi-connected, smart, intelligent things that give you consumables in pods rather than you, like, making it yourself. Can I say this? Can I say this? It's curigs for everything. You know, there's Uber for everything? No, but a bottle of wine, it's not a curing.

It's a bottle of wine that you put another bottle of it. That's what I'm saying is they're turning it into a curing. There's a new trend in the way that. people think about the things in their life. It's not just, you know, put a Wi-Fi chip on it. It's also, like, turn it into a subscription service. So, like, the idea that, like, software as a service is the thing that we've all

accepted, like, you pay a subscription for Microsoft offices. Instead of going to New Egg or whatever and, like, buying the box, we're now, the companies are trying to take that same thing that blew up the technology world and apply it to, like, regular consumable goods, like, wine or coffee. Jake is drunk in that video. It's one of the best videos we've ever made. And on top of all that, it's also like, we are, anybody who wants to make a computer

that does crazy things can just go make one. And that's an old story, but like, it's getting applied to more and more new things and people are just trying crazy shit. And I find that really compelling. Here's what I'll say about this. But this wine bottle is stupid. The wine, yeah.

It's not the curing of wine. It's just, whatever. But I get what you're saying. It's trying to be. They're regulating your use. It's like the idea is that they're cut down on your waist by knowing how much you're consuming and they'll only sell you that much.

Right. So, like, you can buy the four bottles, and then if you don't drink the four bottles, you won't buy another bottle. I mean, you could argue all day that the currig is a terrible idea for coffee and for people, but you can't argue that they've sold a lot of curgs

and a lot of coffee pods. Can I just say this one thing that I actually promised somebody I would say? Oh, God. The Jucero. Mm-hmm. Started by the CEO of Organic Avenue. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. And I was watching our staff discuss this fact yesterday. and Caitlin Tiffany, our social media manager, was like, Organic Avenue is the Taco Bell of Organic Food, and no one should trust him because he's a liar. And I thought that was the greatest print I've ever heard. I've been trying to figure out

what else I can refer to as a Taco Bell of organic food for literally two days. I try to say it to Walt on the Walt podcast yesterday, I just couldn't get it out. He was talking about the app versus Web's and I was like, yeah, Firefox is really the Taco Bell of Organic Food. And I couldn't even say all the words.

It just was like, yeah, didn't work that time. But keep that one in your heart. Firefox is the Kirkland of browsers. That's true. That is true. Wait, but you're going to buy a jucerra. What is wrong with you?

Chris. I don't understand something about it. Can I ask you real quick? Yeah. How do they get the organic things into the bags? That's a, that's a, not something you need to know. And B, you don't want to know.

And that's why this. can't be healthy. When you go and buy bag salad, there's always like the chance that there's a rat in it, right? What? Wait, what?

Yes. Every year there's a story about like someone bought like a bag of salad home and they opened it up and a live rat came scaring out of a bag. And now that's going to happen to your juice. Well, no. Like,

how are they arguing that? A surprising number of results for rat and salad bag. There's literally 500,000 results. I mean, they're putting organic, what, kale and apples and pairs into small little bags and claiming that that's going to be healthier and better for you than real juice.

It is real juice. Well, you're talking to me like I'm the CEO of Organic Avenue, Joanna. I'm just a simple man who wants a juicerro. But you want to, why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

Because the name sounds like a beach party? Well, I haven't thought of that, but that's a very good point. It does sound like a beach party. No, no, no. The name sounds like Hyundai's latest crossover vehicle that you would drive to a beach party. Hyundai Jucero is a great name. But it would be for like an El Camino type thing. Yeah.

With like a surfboard. It has to be an El Camino with a surfboard. It sounds like a beach party. Yes. Sounds like you're young. You're having fun. You're juicing. Look, I'm going to leave it at this.

I want my entire life productized. And we're getting there. Most of my life has been productized. The one thing that hasn't been productized is vegetables. So. And we're finally to the point. Thanks to the innovation of Jucero. where I can have that part of my life productized.

And the reason I want my life productized is because every cool sci-fi movie I saw in the late 80s and early 90s had people had their entire life product ties. That was all like dystopia though. I'm ready for my dystopia, Deter. I've been promised my dystopia. And jucerro soiled. You did go all in on Soilent. I went out all in on Soilent. Are you still on the Soilent?

On occasion. I probably am going to buy a Casper mattress. I'm going to buy everything that's like the tech bro version of the mainstream product. Right. I mean, I think with all of these things, there has to be a purpose. Including your wine and juice. I don't know if I see the purpose. If you really can't see what the purpose was going to be, then why?

Oh, I have no idea what the purpose is. I'm just going to probably. Right. Isn't the purpose to drink juice? I mean, that's the end. But what's wrong with the juice we're drinking? They say, oh, it's so hard to make all of this stuff. And it's true.

I've juiced before. It is not easy. Okay. I also just finished the people versus OJ and it is amazing. Yeah, that's really good. I bought like a $300 juicer and I was like I'm going to become the juice man. I remember that. That was when we were starting the verge.

He was into juice before anyone was into juice. I set up a recurring fresh direct order and all this green stuff would come to my house and then I couldn't handle it all. And if you didn't juice it right away, it all went bad. And then you had to like preserve the juice that you made. Hello, Gucero. So right, Gucero's saying that's the problem that they're solving. So I'm a little bit convinced that that's a good thing. But then when you think about what the sacrifices are going to be in terms of health and organics and the Taco Bell of organicness, you know, you're going down.

Then what's the point of this thing? Well, it's to have juice. It's to be rich and have juice whenever you want it. I'm just arguing like we don't need everything to be connected. Case and point, the umbrella I tested last week. What? Tell me about this. Joanna doing work.

I did some real work. I wore an umbrella with a LTE radio in it real bad. To do what? Just to have? To have. It'd be a great hotspot. That would be something. I can tell you the weather.

Why? If you're using the umbrella, it is almost certain that you know with the weather. If you make it like a cane, I could just look like a dandy man. I'm really curious. What does the umbrella do? It just tells you when you've left it behind.

Wait, what? This is like, send you a, text? Hang on. Hang on. And also, though, every time you walk away from your umbrella,

you get a text. So, wait, the umbrella is a bad relationship. So, like, I left it in my office, text. Does it text,

like, don't leave me? I miss it. It's like, you left me behind. I swear I can change. What if it were smarter? What if it knew the weather?

I feel like you got a new job. It sent you a text if you walked away when it knew it was going to rain later that day, but otherwise it left you alone. Well, this does tell,

I deleted the app because it was so bad. But it did tell you the weather with inside the app so you could go check if it was going to rain today, but it didn't alert you to take your umbrella when you left it. But that would have been a better thing. But again, every time you left your umbrella, like it's a, you know, it's a context thing. It's not smart enough to know where you're going. Also, isn't that just tile? Like, yeah, exactly. So that's what,

so basically the highest innovation is tile and bagged juice. Yes. Can you just, couldn't Capri Sun just kill the Jucero by putting out Capri Sun with like healthy juice in it? No, because there's no machine you put the capriason into Nilai, why do I have to clean them? The juicerro bag has like real like what does it do in there? It just presses the bag or something.

Yeah, it squeezes the bag. That's all it does. It squeezes the bag. Right. Something comes directly out of the vegetable right then. It actually ends up being capriacon but green. Yeah. Sounds delicious. I mean, Jake's getting a jucero. We're going to make

Jake is on the Wi-Fi liquids beat. Yeah. He reviewed the Wi-Fi Brita picture. He did the Wi-Fi wine bottle. He's going to get the juicerro. This is a great trend. The problem is that the video for the wine bottle will be better than all the other ones because he got drunk. Yeah, but you just get him drunk before he does the video for all of these.

One time I had this very emotional dinner at Joanna and I was telling her this very emotional story. And she was like, what are you doing? And she's like, I'm not listening to you. The ladies at the table next to us are talking about their kindles and I have to take notes. I was like, really? And guess what? It was a problem. Did I turn into a call?

Yep. It did. Whenever I get a real opportunity to hear real people talk about technology, I have to seize a moment. What are we? We're not real people? No. You know, one thing that I would say is indicative of the current technology climate is that when Amazon made a fire phone, it was terrible and nobody wanted it. Like, it's not like we're at this place where these big companies are like fending everybody off with pure market muscle.

They are doing that. But, like, I don't know, the barrier to entry is so high because you have to make something so good. And Amazon didn't do that. But if any company could, you would think Amazon could. Well, I feel like that was a really interesting product. It's like, I am excited for someone to do crazy, weird, new things in tech. And I'm glad they tried. I'm really sad that they did a terrible job.

Right. Actually, you bring up a really good point because I think then there draws this line between gimmick and real usefulness. And the fire phone ended up falling into gimmick. But there were some interesting technologies in there. The screen, I don't know what the point of it was, but it was different. A billion cameras on the front. Right.

Look around. But it's funny because if you had a phone with that screen now in VR, you could do all kinds of cool stuff with it. They were just way ahead of that curve. Right. that's what I wrote about in this piece. Like maybe a holograph display is actually not a gimmick anymore if this company can pull it off. Right.

I mean, but that's all improving the phone. That's the thing to me. I think it's really hard to get around. It's the big improvements come not necessarily even when they come to Android, right? Android phone vendors do a lot of cool stuff all the time. And I think honestly right now if I was buying a phone and I had no other phones and I didn't have this job and get a new phone every week, but whatever. If I had to just buy a phone right now, I would be extremely tempted by the S7.

Yeah. Only because of the Gear VR. Only because it has one additional capability. So I'm that jerk. I mean, I'm using a broken iPhone instead of using an S6 that I bought for Gear VR. And like, Gear VR was Samsung's chance to prove to me that they could not screw up an operating system. And they didn't. They made such a bad experience.

Literally, I got the SX for Gear VR, and I sat there for hours trying to figure out how to turn off all these automatic updates. Because I'd be trying to play Gear VR games and, like, hey, I'm going to update your, I don't know what their stupid apper called. They fixed it on the S7. I don't know if it's on the S6, but like when you go into Gear VR, you go to little settings inside VR. There's a Do Not Disturb option now. Right, but like they missed the chance. Yeah. I got S6 when the Gear VR came out.

Yeah. That was sad to me. Remember Big Papa Joe? Yeah. Ladies love to. I'm frequently reminded of Big Papa Joe. Really? On Twitter.

Oh, yeah. There's a lot of people who've got... People don't know who Big Papa Joe is. Kind memories of old Vergecast moments. So we used to take Collins on this show. We might yet again. I will say this. Real chance we're going to reboot the show.

Let's send 200 episodes in this format. Tweak it around the edges a little bit. Anyway, we used to take Colin. one of the callings we asked people is there anybody out there who likes touch whiz and man named big papa joe called us did he told us that ladies love the whiz he told us that he could check all kinds of weather right it was one of the most insane moments on the show ever i think we've had other insane moments though i believe um do you guys still have the fan boy wars with android and windows phone here's one yeah

Yeah, we have Android iOS Wars. The new Fanboy Wars are VR platforms. So all of our Oculus review comments were Vive fanboys and all of our Vive review comments were... That makes sense. I am thrilled that we're getting like a Nintendo Sega console war in VR right away. I think that so much good is going to come of that. What I think is really interesting is the level of... sophistication of understanding.

The VR fanboy war is incredibly nuanced. It's already super meta. It's super meta. A bunch of the stuff can work across the platforms. It's all just plug it into a gaming PC. So there's no like hardware limitations there. And there's a lot of conversation about Steam being locked down versus store exclusives versus DRM at like an incredibly deep nerd level.

and it's remarkable. I mean, even with the fire phone, the reason everybody knew to be disappointed with the fire phone before it ever even came out was because Amazon made the decision to fork the ecosystem and use the fire ecosystem instead of regular Android.

And like a generation of consumers instinctively knew that was a bad idea. Like at a corporate strategic level, you're forking the platform, you're not going to get developer support. That to me is the big difference from when we started, I started in gadget in 2006, 2007.

You had been there for a little bit. 2005. I think I started in 2007. But it's funny, even just back then, the amount of, whatever, it's a new product. It'll be as good as the other products without all of the backstory. And now everybody, the backstory is taken for granted. So the VR fanboys are like ridiculously sophisticated. And they're arguing about the most insane.

They're arguing about the, like, the moral implications of a store exclusive versus actual DRM. Well, yeah, VR. VR's had that, I think, since really early on because Oculus got bought by Facebook and then Notch, the creator of Minecraft, said he wouldn't put Minecraft on Oculus. Right. Because Facebook is a big, evil company. And I think that's really interesting, where Oculus seemed like this chance for a new, out-of-noburned. Nowhere Kickstarter project to redefine a whole platform, a whole thing of experience.

And then they got bought by Facebook and they're still doing really cool stuff. But it's not as impressive, I guess. Right. I don't know. I mean, do you remember that day, it was CS 2012 when Palmer Lucky showed up at the trailer with the first Oculus? Yeah, I think it was 2012. Yeah, it was like our first CS.

First or second? First. Let's see. It had to be 2012. I think it was 2012 And it was amazing And that was like ski goggles With duct tape on them

Yeah Yep Um Dieter's just reading old trees No I'm trying to find my It was a 2013 actually You saw before that though right Yeah so we saw it

So the first time I think most anyone saw it was Billy Jordan and I Or Billy and Jordan are video producers And I went to see John Carmack in Texas Because he had an aerospace company We were to look his rockets And while we were there

He's like I've got this thing This dude on the internet internet made it. It seems pretty cool. You want to check it out. And it was literally, it was ski goggles. The original Oculus Rift, John Carmack had just made it based on Palmer's like forum design. And that was the first time we saw it was May 2012. And then 2013 is when they first did their CES. And that's when he came to the trailer, showed to everyone on a slightly better version, still duct taped everywhere. Yeah, it was ridiculous. Yeah. It was, it was mind

blowing. I don't think there's been a, I mean, Joanna, you just did a big VR piece. What do you think it's going to, what do you think the curve is for the normals? I think, well, actually, I was just thinking that as Ross said that. So 2012 to now for what we're seeing in the Oculus, right? Yep. So let's think similar to what we're going on right now. I mean, that thing was a janky, crazy prototype. I mean.

Yeah, I think it was like 640 by 480 per eye. Like it was like barely anything. It was super blurry. There's like no like adjusting the game. I think they used a Doom 3. like tweaked version of that it was the ugliest thing but it was still so compelling that you could like just look around

not walk around just kind of look around and use the control of everything else every demo I mean that is actually and like that's where I feel like I do feel like I feel like an asshole for the last like 30 minutes complaining about oh we've just seen smartphones you're so boring you know like

what you're saying like that's amazing that we witness this right like we are witnessing that happen and that is amazing and like we're going to witness it with VR and we're We've definitely witnessed it with smartphones, and it is amazing. Correct.

And then augmented reality is going to be crazy. Do you think it's going to bigger than... Yeah, I think there's some combination of the two that's going to... I think it's definitely going to be... Augmented reality is going to be bigger, for sure. What do you think? Because I think Microsoft's making obviously the bigger bet on AR with HoloLens, and my suspicion is that Apple will make a bigger bet on AR than VR.

I think augmented reality, it doesn't take up your whole eye. And so you're still in the world. And so you can improve the world that you're in. I mean, I really think that the ideal augmented, like I think they're kind of doing this with the new Pokemon thing. I really think the, I don't know if they're going to do a good job, but the sheer concept of this Pokemon augmented reality

AR game kind of thing where you take a universe that has always been virtual and a dream and put it into the real world is going to be so compelling and it's going to take over people's lives. It's going to be something to do with all your time. It's not a hobby, really. It's not something you go home and do after work. It's now part of your whole life. And I think that only works when it's augmented reality because VR, you have to set aside a specific time to go away and do it.

Yeah, there's the isolating factor of VR, which you're talking about, which is people just keep asking, like, where will I be doing this? And I'm like, well, sitting at home or going in your office or, and like, yeah, you would set aside this time to possibly do some sort of training or do some sort of tour of a house or the number of different things. I just think there could be this combination of both that gets people used to either I'm going to go to this world or I'm going to use these glasses to improve something in my current world like measuring a kitchen cabinet or shopping or something like that. Wait, that's a total

paradigm shift that you're describing, right? Because the concept of where do I use technology didn't exist until phones. Because previous to that, you had a computer room. You had a computer room. The dealer was really big on computer. I love a computer room. You had a living room. You would go to the office to use a computer, you would go to school to use a computer. There were distinct times and places in which you would use technology. And that's foreign to people. It doesn't feel right. But that was 10 years ago. That was just 100% true. Right. And I think VR is literally making people right now look at their home and figure out how to enjoy it. Right. But I think that is going to keep it a relative niche to what mobile phones were able to do, which is be everywhere all the time,

always useful. Do you think anything's going to, come up and be as disruptive as a phone. I mean, if the hype behind Magic Leap turns out to be anywhere near true, I think it could realize this vision that Paul is talking about. I think that indoor drones, I don't know if they'll be as disruptive as

the phone, but like drones are amazing, but like the use cases are like, you know, filming stuff and scrunt around outside, but we're starting to see some like quiet, reasonable indoor drones that can run around and do things. And I think that if someone can figure out a mainstream use

for that, that's going to be a big change and a big shift. Oh, so that question, by the way, was a setup for Chris. Because the obvious answer of what the next disruptive thing is is self-driving cars. I don't think that's the next. Really? No, I think that's the disruptive thing, two or three things from now. Like, if you go back 100 years, the big disruptive thing happens every seven to 20 years, right? You have the internet.

You have the computer. You could make an argument for the laptop. The ubiquitous laptop is a disruptive thing. than the phone, the VR. The iPhone. Yeah. Then obviously the Android tablet ecosystem. Of course.

And I think, you know, we're still in the pre-Iphone days of both VR and drones where the truly magical moment in both of those categories hasn't happened yet. I think the Phantom 4 is a drone. No, but it's still a niche product, right? Like your parents are not saying, oh, I got to have a Phantom 4. Like who not everyone needs everything, first of all. That's my motto. Don't hit us best friend, the Phantom 4. It's like not everyone,

not only does not everyone need everything. What are you using drones for? I think drones become disruptive when they start delivering stuff to my house. Like juice packs. No, not juice packs, things of actual vegetables to make the juice. No, no, drones delivering vegetables is literally this dystopian future. Fine.

Okay. Just as long as clear. But I still don't think, I like drones. very fun to watch and play with, but what is the real practical use of drones other than what Paul has just mentioned? I mean, and taking very beautiful video at people's weddings and putting in our own videos, it's very, it's beautiful. I really need to put that ring video on the site, by the way. Yeah.

I just realize I haven't done that. But don't you feel guilt in your heart about turning your friend's wedding into content? No. No. All right, we'll do it. That's what I told. Anyway. Yes.

Thanks, Paul. See, I knew there was a reason I had you on the show today. I think it's more like if you have a drone in your life, your life is better. Okay. Cool. No. That's not it. I think if you have anything in your life that can move around for you, that radically changes your reach as a person.

So right now the Phantom 4 can fly around and take pictures. But instead of relying on a company to drone things to you, If you can take a drone out in the world and send it somewhere for you, that is a different, totally different value proposition. Why won't we just have Uber do it? What do you mean? But like your presence, if you've got AR or VR, you feel immersed in another world. But that other world could be the thing that the drone is showing you. So if I want to go hang out in San Francisco, I could like log into a drone that's in San Francisco, go have my meeting and the,

office with like my little flying drone. There's a Portlandia episode or skit about exactly that. Telepresence robots. Yeah. Where they visit a, what concert is it? Why do you need the drone for that? Because the drone can get around in physical space.

Oh, it's a flaming lips. They visit a flaming lips concert using a drone. Get help. Like if you've used the like the iPad on stick. Yeah, right. Right. The iPad. Yeah.

But if you can get a good indoor flying drone that isn't dangerous and isn't loud and is like, and we accept it as not the creepiest thing ever, which we might not. Super the creepiest thing ever. So offices have flying drones with people. hanging out. Oh, no. Okay. This is great.

And because it's AR, like, they'll have a little QR code on them and, like, you'll tell the system this is Deeter and, like, well, there'll be two drones talking to each other. Yes. But they'll each, each person looking at it through their VR headset, we'll just see the person.

So for homework. Or holograms. Yeah. For homework, everybody needs. God damn it, man. Everybody needs to read. No. Mr. Patel, you have something to say.

Yes, I'm the host of the show. No, Paul is. Paul is making a point and I have to go in five minutes. I'm giving people homework. Everybody needs to read, Rainbow's End by Werner Vinji, which explains the whole augmented reality future,

where one of the really interesting things about that, you mentioned that QR code. You can have consensual realities where it's like I've decided that I want to represent myself as this way and I'm going to be a big fluffy bunny. and other people who want to be part of that reality can see me the way I want to be represented. And you kind of divide up the same meat space into lots of different realities all at once.

And it's insane. But why does it have to be augmented reality? Why can't it be virtual reality? Because did you read Ready Player One? Yeah. So that's like similar in a way. Because Ready Player One is more dystopian to me because like as much as I like the idea of being in like a matrix style tube with my brain jacked in for the rest of my life, I don't think

my mom would like that. Right. But even, but when you're picturing yourself as this fluffy bunny, which you are already. I'm thinking. Why, why do you, what is the purpose of augmented,

like just the fact that you can see through and that you can see those other objects in the real world? Yeah, I'm in the real world with all its perks. and yet I'm choosing to see all Coca-Cola ads as ads for slurm or whatever. Slurm? What is slurms? Slurm?

Tell me more about slurm. I think slurms the thing. It's actually the next generation of pentile displays. Slurm displays. What happened with that? That was just a toss-out for the people have been tweeting me about pentile displays this entire time. Yeah, it's from Futurama. by the way

Nilai Patel has always loved Pentile I'm gonna read that book I need to understand a little bit more about Is the S7 still Penton?

How we can still live in augmented reality What does Pentyle even mean anymore? Oh God Remember when I used to take Macro the photos? It's great

Look here's what This has been Here's our gadgets are back Rainbow This is being Gaship podcast Greetings Greetings

Revitable Accomplish Like the Oh Look Here's right now Gaggats are back And they're going to

Drive themselves around They're going to look like bunnies apparently in some sort of AR dystopia. They're going to make you fucking juice. Because you have no idea how to spend money. Trust none.

Oh, he does work at AOL still, so he's making some of money. You're going to spend those AOL cheese. Poor AOL. David Poe get a room and gadget. It's just still in my life. Because if they buy Yahoo! Oh, yeah. That makes sense.

And Yahoo Tech merges with that. We're going to stick them. That makes sense. Look, here's what I know. Gadgets are back. I'm just going to keep saying it. I believe it in my heart. Like, the phones are boring.

Yep. The world around phones. You can't try to make money on the phone. It's really hard to even make a phone app anymore. Right? Do you read, everyone's read Casey Newton's piece, Life and Death in the App Store? It is so hard to launch a new app on the iPhone now

because the space is crowded. Yeah. The App Store policies aren't great. I launched the app. I made like 300 bucks. What was your app? Do you know I still have the app of my phone that counts down when you're going to come back to the internet? Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.

Oh, Dan told me the S7 is still pentile. Thanks, Dan. That's why I didn't buy it. Nice. Let me open this app. It's a great phone. Where is it? Spotlight.

Garbage. Oh, there it is. Paul, you've been back online for, oh my God, it reset. No. It's over a thousand days. You've been back online for 17 minutes, 17 hours, and something over. A thousand days. Something over a thousand days.

No, I just think the ecosystem of things are on gadgets. We didn't talk about wearables once on this show. We didn't talk. How's your Apple Watch? Yeah. You're both wearing them over there. I mean, I haven't bought another watch because this one was so expensive. Like, it tells time.

That's cool. I haven't wore mine in like two weeks, and the only thing I miss is telling the time. Dieter's wearing a 360? Paired to an iPhone. Ooh, that's a move. Wow. You know, the wire cutter today. said the 360s best smart watch on the market

that's that is aggressive in my mind I actually do think also for the design I was wearing the other one and it looks really a lot nicer than the They say for the market by the way Just in case you want to know what the experience of sitting next to Dieter on the Vergecast is

He just looked at his smart watch and dismissed a Trello notification Like super casually He was like nope And then started typing That's what it's like working to Verge Anyway this is a great show I'm very happy to have worked with all of you

in this way for so long. I mean, I still work with most of you, so it's fine. I still work at AOL. That joke is just going to keep doing. Hey, Chris, what day is it? Friday. Okay. What?

You're weird. Everyone's a show. Hey, look, that was a show. We have a million other shows that you can listen to. I have a show with Walt Mossberg, which is, by the way, when we were all leaving and Gadgett to do this, the idea that years later, Walt would work at the verge, and I would host a podcast with him. And I would have Waltz's all job.

And you have Waltz's all job! That is fucking bonkers. Just like everybody, just think about that. That is fucking bonkers. I think about that often. That is weird. And one day you and I are going to have a podcast. We are.

Yeah. Yes. And you're going to call me old man on the podcast. Anyway, so control of delete. Chris Plains what's tech. Emily Ashita and Liz Zapato have for GSP, our entertainment and sign show. Lauren Good has,

has too embarrassed to ask. There's so many of these. Long ago, that's too embarrassed to ask on the Recode Network. Carrey Shuscher has Recode Decode. Peter Kafka has Recode Media. Is there one more? Probably.

Dieter Bone has a podcast in his head. Yeah. The Verge Mobile show is still not back in the air. Oh God. Do not bring up the original show. It never will. If you are on Twitter, please tweet at Z-Power.

About the virtual show at Vlad and Dan, Nick. We'll think of something. Let's start a podcast. Joanna is at the Wall Street Journal, where she makes a video every week. Behind a paywall. Not behind a paywall.

Not. Those things are cool. Why aren't they coming out? You got to flick it. We got to be aggressive. We're going to celebrate. This is that. It was Vergecast 200.

Thank you for listening. Thank you for sticking. Jared is done. Uranus fired all over again. Thank you for being with us for 200 episodes. Rock and roll. Paul. Rock and roll.

Paul. Sternburn.