The Vergecast - Snap Inc IPO, ARM processors in Macbooks, and Apple earnings

Episode Date: February 3, 2017

Vergecast episode 241! This week, Nilay and Dieter bring back Ross Miller and Megan Farokhmanesh to assist covering the news from this week. Snap Inc. filed for a $3 billion IPO, Apple is reportedly putting ARM chips in Macs, and Facebook is making a TV app. In between all that listen to Nilay’s take on fire logs, Dieter’s experience with a Zelda-themed escape room, and the wackiness of internet culture from Megan and Ross. Nilay and Dieter apologized for this episode to me personally — but really, we covered a lot and had a good time so I think they’re just being hard on themselves. Enjoy! 03:37 - Snap Inc IPO 08:41 - Facebook wants to build app for set-top boxes 16:21 - Duraflame 18:37 - Apple earnings 31:42 - MacBook Touch Bar barred from bar test takers this February 35:50 - ARM processors in MacBooks 40:07 - Why politics shows up on our site a lot lately 49:47 - Zelda escape the room 51:31 - We Are Your Friends 56:56 - Ross’ weekly segment “Gadgetorial? Counterpoint” 1:03:15 - Lightning round Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Save it for the show. Which, by the way, we could start whenever you want. Hey, welcome to The Vergecast. We started it. Just like that. So smooth. So smooth. Yeah.

Look, I'm a little... Yeah. It's here. Here's what's happening. It's something I call the Miller Gambit. I'm here. I'm Neil I Patel. I'm here.

I'm Paul Miller. See, that's Ross Miller. Oh. Oh, I get it. Oh. It's a real... It's very disorienting. But anyway, this is the Vergecast.

Flagship podcast, Theverge.com. It's a show. It's a show about technology and culture. Any random fucking Miller can show up whenever they want. Megan's here. Hey. They are contractually. I was going to make a joke.

You got this. You got this. Dieter. We'll wait for you. Go on. Anytime ready. Just jump right in. And Deeter Bone.

Goodbye. Hi. How's it going? Make a joke. I did. It's gone. Moment past. You know, for years in the show, we were criticized for just incessant cross-talk.

But I feel like that gave the old things. It was like a callback. A little fan service. Dieter tells a joke that nobody could hear because of my stuff. They're better off for it. I bet it was funny-ish. So there's actually a lot going on. Another leak of the LGG6 happened this week.

It just went up, breaking news on the site. I only bring this up to mention that the LGG6 lead sponsor of my vodka, Cizzer vodka. Yeah. Cut through the night. This is where, as a Miller, you're, I think, obligated to say the word snip-snip. That was my joke. Nah.

It is funny. That was a real humdinger, Dieter. I'm just going to be really honest with the audience. I want to say something, and we're going to, the whole second section of the show in our runoff. If you say the wrong thing, by the way, I'm only going to reply in, like, references to the last Packers playoff game, so this is awful. It's an emotionally taxing time here in these United States of America.

I have not ever in my career as a journey. journalist encountered a time in which no story could survive. Like, no one is interested in anything except for Donald Trump. It is remarkable. The only thing that people have been interested in besides Donald Trump on the entire verge is my wife brutally destroying a curved TV and by extension, me. That's it. It was a pretty good take down.

It was great. I mean, you know, I love her. She's a great writer. Clearly, I purchased the wrong television. Let's go back to that now, actually. Why? Why? Why?

You're trying to open with it? No. I can't. What I'm saying is it has been a hard week. We're going to, there's a bunch of tech news to talk about. But I'm just letting the audience know. And I'm sure you're right there with me, probably, that there has been just this unrelenting wave of Trump news.

Whether you're pro-Trump, you're anti-Trump, I know you're feeling it. It's just, it never stops. The man picked a fight with fucking. Australia yesterday. Yep. And then Donald Schwarzenegger today. It's just really hard. So we're going to do our best.

There's actually a bunch of tech-related Trump stuff to talk about. We'll do that second. Okay. But just if you catch these weary tones, it's just hear me out. Like, I promise, we're just doing our best. All drinking our Red Bull. We're like literally, yeah, all three of us at this table are sucking down Red Bulls right now. And by the way, Paul is actually just sick.

He's not here right now. He's just ill. We wish him well. He'll be back next week. Sure. Anyhow. Let's start us news. There's actually two pieces of semi-breaking news.

Yes. You want to start with Snapchat? Let's start a Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap, Inc. Literally, as we are speaking, Snap Inc. Filed for its IPO.

Right. Here's the number, and this is like much anticipated. They've been very secretive about it. The number that leaps out to me is that their IPO filing claims 158 million daily active users. Right. Which is, compared to Facebook, which in July of 2016, Facebook revealed it has 1.71 billion monthly active users and over a billion mobile daily active users.

So Facebook is about to crack 2 billion monthly active users. Right. And it already had over a billion daily active users. Snap, which is like the hottest social network going, they're making a bunch of money, future TV, feeling so confident that they won't reveal information to potential and investors ahead of the IPO. Like, it's a very secretive process. Their filing only claims $158 million.

Does it seem like Snap is smaller or bigger than your expectations? I can't remember how many active users Twitter has. I assumed it was more than Twitter at this point, but... Twitter is always hovering around 300 million monthly active users. It's smaller than Twitter. So that's not. So daily is probably much smaller. But daily is...

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. What I'll say about this is, like, I have family members on most social media accounts, not on Snapchat. So that to me is the difference. How many family members are teens?

That's my point, though. My mom's on on Snapchat. My mom is on, like, everything else, though. Right. So, I mean, like, it's, is it generational divide then? I mean, like... Right. Instagram Stories, I just look this up.

October 2016. Instagram Stories, just the stories product, 100 million daily active users. So Snapchat is, like, not much bigger than Instagram's newest product. Right. It's far smaller than Facebook. Probably Instagram is a... Yeah, Instagram has 400 million daily active users. And that's that is 20 hours old, literally.

I mean, the way I would read this is like pretty good time to IPO. You're still growing. You've got, I think, a respectable user base. They're making money off of it. I don't know. I think this number is about what I expected. It's not shockingly high or shockingly low. And I don't look at it like, oh, my God, you're smaller than Facebook.

Ha, ha. I look at it as, hey, you're probably bigger than Twitter. And the Instagram stories comparison is what's really interesting. that they just, Instagram made Snapchat, like the core Snapchat thing, a feature, and they just shamelessly stole it, and it just totally worked. I love Instagram stories. I never used Snapchat. Really?

Really? Never. It just doesn't occur to me to use Snapchat. Like, I did it. Like, I used Snapchat on Monday because people are like, there's pictures in the office, and I wasn't able to come to the new office on Monday. Okay. I was driven to it.

I still haven't gotten into Instagram stories because me, like, Instagram has this, like, air of permanence to it. So I'm a login Instagram, I'm having a decent, photo to put up. Snap is still to me. It's like, oh, fuck it. I'll just, here's a cat. It's for garbage, right? Like, I only send people like trash snaps. Whereas, like, Instagram. Do you say trash snaps? Trash snaps? Sometimes literally trash. Is literally, well, that's good. But I was

going to say trash snaps is a Tumblr waiting to happen. Does Tumblr still exist? Tumblr does exist. It's where the teens gather. So the teens are still like, where is the worst place in the internet? I think Tumblr's actually, I think that's, yeah, I think that's Reddit. I got derailed. Oh, Snapchat, no. So what I was saying is like, I don't use Instagram stories because, like, I have a lot of co-workers that follow me. I can't control who can see my Instagram story, right? Right.

But Snapchat, it's like, if I just want to send a weird thing, I can just send a weird thing. You know what I mean? It's a lot of deal. And drawing cartoons on, like, Cat Snaps is so much easier on Snapchat. Yeah. I mean, look, I understand the appeal of Snapchat. I think I'm just old. I think you are too.

That's basically it. Or, like, I send a lot of just like, you didn't know what a trash snap was. So, Dito was all over that. He was like, oh, yeah. Trashnop. It's like when you sound like a drum, it's like at 2 a.m. Like, look, I found this like thing on the floor, but it's funny. I'm going to draw a picture and make a joke.

Like, or. Wait, let's just take that frame by frame. It's 2 a.m. I'm drunk. I found this thing on the floor. Just use your imagination. It could be anything. Just any funny floor objects while you're hammered.

Just you're at a bar and you find a weird thing on the floor. I don't know. We do different things in barbers I go to some weird bars I guess No I get it Yeah I also like It just it's stupid shit

Like I said like Okay so right now TC Sotic And I have a snap streak of like 130 something days of just cat snaps Yeah We just send each other snaps of our cats And that's literally it Yeah no look I understand

And like you know Their whole thing is like It's not messaging It's people are just talking Right Ross is snapping right now This is great And you have a hat now What are you gonna draw on there though

I haven't decided I just put hats on everybody Did you get a snap of the floor? No, it's not good trash. I don't have good trash snaps here. Where sponsors pay good money to be near live Snapchat narration. By the way, that would be a great show. I would listen to a hell out of that show.

But anyway, the reason I bring this up, we obviously don't talk about IPO news a lot, although we are going to talk about Apple's earnings in a second here. But the reason I bring it up is the other piece of news that came out this week is Facebook wants to build an app for, like, set-top boxes. They're talking about basically being where you go to watch things. like they're going to invest in high-end TV-like content. I'm making scare quotes as I say that. The next battle for what happens on your phone screen is what app shows you TV.

Like, it's pretty clear that that's where all of these companies want to go right now. So obviously Google has YouTube. They're doing great. Obviously, Snapchat is going to raise a ton of money in this IPO process because they have such control over what they show you and they can put ads in it in all kinds of different ways. Instagram went to the algorithmic feed. Now they can put more ads in. They have stories.

They can put more ads in. Facebook obviously is the disgusting monster that is Facebook. And then Twitter is just garbage because they don't have this algorithmic feed and they're like video product. They do have Thursday Night Football. Yeah.

And like we did a show on Twitter. Like you know, like they're, but it's all the same strategy in different ways. The one thing Twitter can't do that all of these other ones can do is interrupt what you're doing with video. Right.

Like every other platform that is a feed of that kind can stop what you're doing and be like, now you're watching this video. Right. And many of them you can click right by. Twitter has not made that move because their platform just isn't geared to that thing. Right. I think Facebook doing set top makes sense to me, right?

Because, like, they're becoming a huge video platform. But, like, so much for so long was, like, let's do quick two-minute videos to go through feeds. Yeah. If they want the, like, quality content that kind of lean back, I'll spend five, ten minutes watching something. Like, that would fit. That would fit, like, that kind of hard. hardware goal. I don't know that it makes that much sense. I mean, disclosure, my wife works for

Oculus, which is a division of Facebook. But I use my YouTube, I use my YouTube TV app all the time. Right. It's like, oh, I have 15 minutes. I don't want to watch a TV show or I have 20 minutes. I don't want to watch a sitcom. I'll watch some YouTube videos. But there's a whole system of like channels and shows and a whole bunch of stuff that grew up organically on YouTube. the dot com that Facebook just I don't think anybody uses it that way they see it in their stream or they don't and they need to get a whole lot of stuff lined up and made for me to actually want to watch it on TV otherwise it's just going to be like you know the first stuff that twitter did on TV like you'd have like a random ass like Twitter stream snapped to the side of the

show that you're watching like nobody wants a Facebook stream on their TV uh And so, like, there's the, does Facebook really need to have a TV app? Are they really putting that much into it? Or is it just a thing to do because what the hell they can? But the, for me, the bigger question is the thing that Neely said, which is what's going to matter on the phone? Like, who's going to win the TV watching, you know, video watching experience on the phone? And I actually think that's like way more wide open. I think that you can look at Snapchat, Instagram, even Twitter.

and I think there's a lot more like possibilities there and nobody's figured it out there yet. You know, there's go 90, right? Like everybody's trying to do something and nobody's really gotten it right. Not even YouTube, honestly. Like YouTube's gotten a lot right. But I don't know, fundamentally, how often do you like open up the YouTube app on your phone and like go to town? Right. So here's the Zuckerberg quote, which is really interesting, actually.

This is during an earnings call. I've said before that I see videos a megatrend on the same order as mobile. That's why we're going to keep putting video first across our family of apps and make it easier for people to capture and share video in new ways. And then he suggested they're going to start paying premium content. Basically, he's saying the video tab on Facebook is going to become the primary thing that you do on Facebook, which is a huge, weird shift for that company. I mean, the most important thing about that quote is he spoiled the next Transformers movie by revealing the name of the supervillain. Megatrend. Megatrend.

I think we've made this show Megatrons Oh yeah Megatran His hype beast little brother It's just Sam Scheper Making robot noises It's great

Everyone loves them One or zero now We need a robot voice Just saying Supreme Oh man Anyway I think you're right I mean

The move here is Everything was gonna turn In a video on your phone Right I think the But I don't know That just video on your phone by itself quite gets you there.

Like Facebook has the stream plus video. Twitter has, you know, horrible news about Donald Trump plus video. Instagram has pretty pictures of food plus video. Snapchat has your friends' pictures of things on the floor of bars plus video. No. I mean, I would say Snapchat is a one platform. Instagram stories to some extent where it's, I see, there's more video that gets shared across it. than just like pure snaps, right?

Like the language of that is short video clips, just as the language of stories, Instagram stories is short video clips. So like at least they're, it's not a plus video. They're at least on equal footing. Okay, that's fair. But I guess what I'm saying is I don't think that anybody,

I mean, I'm specifically looking at Go 90 in YouTube here, anybody that thinks that a pure video, mobile video platform is the answer to what do we want video? and TV style content on our phones to look like. I don't think that's right at all. I think there's got to be something else in addition to, oh, look, there's a bunch of video here. Yeah.

I mean, the TV thing is the, like, we have talked a lot about the TVification of the internet, like just as a general thing. And like, here's, there's our man, here's DJT again, coming in. And like, you know, Trump is going to, his FCC looks poised to undo net neutrality. And then the consumer experience,

of these apps is like TV style. You turn them on and they start showing you things. Right. And like you can just see those two forces collide where it's like T-Mobile decides binge on or whatever they're calling is going to include a bunch of free YouTube. But Snapchat, hey, you want your IPO to go well? Like pay us some money. Right.

Or we're going to charge our users to use Snapchat. It's the premium cable tier. Or AT&T and Verizon, I'm sure, I already like, hey Google, like just pay us. and YouTube can be free. Right. Right. And like, you can just see those things happening

where if the money is, and it really appears to be where the money is going, like the money is in inserting ads inside of these, like, stories or like, there needs to be a phrase for this. I almost said force-fed video. Let's just go with it. Force-fed video where they're just like feeding you shit. And you can't stop.

And that's where the ads go. Like, of course, like, every carrier is going to be like, what if we fuck with you a little bit? Yeah. Yeah, if you pay us, we'll fuck you with you a little. I mean, I've never been in like a major carrier revenue meeting, but I imagine the last one of their slides is always like, new ways to fuck with them.

And then like the CEO's like, anyone gotten ideas? Like, of course. Like, if that's what Lowell McAdam does, that's what his deck is. He makes it in keynote. It's very pretty. And everyone's like, here comes. I'm almost done. He's like, new ways to fuck when the interns in the back.

Like, sure. Can I tell a story about fire logs? What? No, I was going to stop you. Wow. You have to now. I just thought, have you ever bought a Dura Flame? No.

What? Okay, so I... Right, because I'm old. So, uh, every, no, you've never bought a Dura Flame. Wait, what is a Dura Flame? I don't even know what that is. I'm Googling it. No, it's not that we're old, it's that we're from the Midwest.

Yeah, that's true. I'm also from, I'm from Missouri. I'm from the Midwest. I've been meaning to post... I've been trying to, like, craft the right Instagram caption for this for some time. Oh, that thing. So Dera Flame is like a compressed fire log. Literally looking this up right now.

It's like, it's basically compressed sawdust draught in paper. You like throw it in a fireplace. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Right. The Dura Flame marketing campaign as near as I can tell is like variations on the phrase, you're going to fuck tonight. So like the regular Dura frame, the box of six that you buy on the side and huge letter,

it just says, tonight's the night. I found the picture. Wait. What? It super says tonight's the night on it. It really does. And then there's like an up model, the Dura Flame goal. the Dura Flame gold.

And that one is like two people sitting on a couch and it just says make tonight gold. Okay, so. And like, I keep them, every time I buy one of these things, I literally think about the meeting that they had. Like someone's like, what should our new, like, you know, like some VP marketing is like,

we're getting killed in the log market. You know, like whatever they say. It's like a Dura Flame is like. And they're like, what differentiates us from our competitors? And like some interns like, we're for fucking. Like, they just like ran with it. I don't know. Or like some, like some markings,

like, oh, I thought this was a KY meeting. Well, we'll just use the same slide deck to see what happens. It's one gigantic conglomerate. They're like, oh, we blew it again. Dura flame, you get no marketing budget. Anyway, it's just, I think about it. Probably more than any other human beings

ever thought about it. I will say, I just found the natural Dura Flame and it's just this lady by yourself. The natural Dura Flame? It's just true by herself. Yeah, she gets no reaction. It's not the night. for her.

It's not for anybody, fairly. You didn't buy the right sawdust. For the single ladies of the world. The loneliest log. Okay. I'm sorry. Look, I'm trying. I'm trying to bring joy into this world.

Deeter, do you want to talk about Apple learnings? Yeah. By which I mean, have you memorized the following numbers? No, I've definitely not. I've definitely not. I've never mentioned numbers. Numbers, basically. The most important number is that they

they swung back to grow. on iPhone revenue. And so after year after year after year after year, quarter after quarter after quarter of of quarter making more money than the you know the year previous on iPhones last quarter they had a dip and now they're back up to making more of them year over year. So I have the numbers. They made $78.4 billion in revenue. They sold 78 million iPhones. They have a profit of $17.8 billion. These numbers are now in the order of like silly like they

They're meaningless. They've been a while, but like, it's crazy. They have, I forget how much, how many billions do they have in the bank and like cash and securities? It's 200 something. 200 billion parked overseas. Right. Yeah.

Well, like, nine, something over 90% of all of their cash reserves right now are overseas. And that number is something like 200 something billion. Right. So they're, you know, and then max sales are up-ish. iPad sales are down-ish. Right. I think there's a big question. Other is down-ish, but apparently Apple Watch as a part of other is doing really, really well.

Yeah, right, because like other is, the year-over-year the iPad sales and revenue are down 20%. And then services, fastest growing was up 18%. So, like, you know, it's a... And we can get into all these things like iPad sales are down. That's like a want-want thing. But there wasn't like a hot shit new iPad in the last quarter. that made sense to push sales. So maybe don't freak out.

And also, in terms of raw units, it is, in fact, out selling the Mac. So don't freak out there either. But then again, you know, like you just, you run down like these like narratives like what is the future of each of Apple's businesses. And it's all very interesting. And I would love to do it. And like we can do it right now.

But at the end of all of those small tales, you just need to like step back and see. that it's all very small potatoes compared to the goddamn iPhone. Which is two-thirds of their business. So here's the thing about the iPhone. I'm going to call out our boy, John Gruber, directly on this podcast right now.

Oh, boy. Why not? He can take it. Gruber obviously posted like, no one cares about the headphone jack. It's like a thing. He linked to my review. He's like, obviously no one cared.

You can make that argument. But here is, and he did. Are you saying that if they had put a headphone jack in it, they would have sold even more iPhones? No, I'm not saying any one of those things. I'm saying the iPhone is such a dominant product that gets sold on two-year sale cycles on carrier plans that drive you to get a new phone every two years, that I think Apple is in an absolutely dominant position when it comes to making

decisions about technology. Like the market is no longer deciding what phone will be the most popular. And even if the market was doing a good job of that, the iPhone's best competitor, did a bunch of exploding last year. Right? So like the one thing in the market that you might buy other than the iPhone, the Note 7, you might recall,

had a small problem with exploding. Just a little problem. So you can't. It's illegal to take one on a plane. Yeah. But if you put one in your fireplace, you're probably going to fuck. It's just where you are with the Galaxy Note 7.

That's so bad. I don't think Apple's specific choices about the phone are like in a competitive dynamic in the market where people are like, I don't like that one decision. I'm going to get an equivalent product that's marketed against that decision. I think they're just like, I'm on AT&T next and another phone came to my house. And they're happy. And they're going to do whatever they're told to do. And I think that's a really interesting position for Apple. You know, like I think it's not a good decision to take the headphone jack out.

I haven't bought one of these new phones. But I'm still paying AT&T on the next plan. Right. So I should get a new phone. But I can't because the phone I would get, again, explodes. And they don't have the pixel. By the way, I finally bought a pixel. The pixel was available.

The black pixel Excel unlocked, available from the Google store for 25 minutes, two days ago. Someone tweeted at me. I bought it. I tweeted that I'd bought it and then someone was like, it's already gone. Wow. So they had five. What? Good job. Yeah. Google's doing great at their big push into hardware. So I'm just saying like it's cool. Like I'm happy for Apple. It's a good phone. People are excited about it. A bunch of people here have them. Great camera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Stupid dongles. But I look at these sales and I'm like, a bunch of things happened for Apple over the past couple years that add up to everybody with an iPhone, at least in America, just gets a new iPhone. Like it's literally an automatic cycle. Like that is the

plan you get from your carrier where it's like at the end of two years. Like would you like a new phone? You paid for it. It's part of your plan. And everyone's like yes. Right. And so like that's why they had the S cycle. It's like, well, if you're off for a year, like you could like kind of like last year's but a little bit better model. Yeah. So I look at this number and Diderer, like they ticked back into growth. It's not like substantial growth. It's like a year ago they sold like 76 million or something. And this year they sold 78. Like they're converting a substantial percentage of people on that two year cycle plus some other strong. Yeah. I mean, that's fair. But I do think that the idea that like Apple could literally nothing they could do could screw up iPhone sales is like not necessarily true. Like they still have to continue to make a good product that people want. And maybe

they get like a year of grace or two, you know, until people realize it. Oh, wait, this one's not as good. So I think that maybe overstates it a little bit. But I think you're right that at least in, you know, the U.S. market. It's just like the boulder is too big rolling down the hill, right? And it's just going to keep rolling. it's a bad metaphor and I'm very sorry somebody saved me from trying to come back to this metaphor

no I'm gonna let you you know let you're just hang out back I mean you definitely opened with an attack on me and my football team so you can just hang out alone yeah

I'm telling you guys it's just a real chippy time in these United States okay so that's a bunch of stuff we should talk about Apple Watch real quick because I have a similar theory with the watch

and I don't mean to like just try to poke holes what was a good what was a great quarter for Apple like a great They did great. They made good products.

People bought them. I hope people are happy. I just think there are, inside of the narrative, there are questions that remain to be answered about why they're so successful. And I don't think that the answer is just the market has decided. Right. Like, it was a weird year for phones. Right. And, like, I don't think the market is wide open.

I think with the watch, Dieter, are you about to say something? I was about to defend the watch, but I'm going to wait if you do attack it first. I'm not attacking the watch. I think Apple's put themselves. You're going to throw the long bomb to attach it. Instead of it getting caught by the receiver of your rhetoric, I'm going to bat it away like your corners were unable to do at the last football game. I mean, you're just drowning. But it's cool.

Yeah, it's real bad. It's like my stick now is disappointed with you. I'm going to crawl to the table. I make. I make awful jokes and then I stick to them. I think Apple has put themselves in a position of absolute dominance when it comes to wearables. Because we have, we just, we've had them around. Dieter's, you've got it, you wear them more than anybody I know.

Maybe Dan wears them more. But what are they good for? They're good for notifications. They're good for a little bit of health and fitness. People like those two things about them. So my wife, like, loves her Fitbit. couldn't give a shit about notifications, but loves the step counting, so she has a Fitbit because it's better at step counting the Apple Watch. I think more people are more interested in

notifications and health tracking is a bonus. The Apple Watch is just because it's Apple's platform, better at notifications than any other smart watch can be paired to an iPhone. Absolutely true. You can reply to an iMessage in the Apple Watch. You can't do that on any other product. So of course the Apple Watch sells better to iPhone owners. and iPhone owners, demographically, more wealthy, more year to buy stuff,

more happy to buy stuff from Apple, they're going to buy Apple watches. It's brilliant. Like, I don't see anything bad about it. It's just,

it's a statement of fact. Like, the market for things that are good at the things that you want a smart watch to do for iPhone owners consists of one product. So people are going to buy that one.

I think as long as Apple maintains that, they're golden. Well, for a market that is still very small, and who knows, like if it's going to actually grow a bunch beyond that for any time. No, I mean, it's like, I mean, it's hard to tell.

But like it's, I would say most people would agree that it is a better product that is probably doing better than like the Apple TV. True, true. Right? Yeah. Deid what were you going to say? I was going to give the Apple Watch a little bit more credit. If they had not done what they did with watch OS3, I don't think that they would have had such a good holiday quarter. I think that they really turned it around.

They actually got the prices at like the right price point. They simplified the thing so it like worked better and they have a more coherent story about it. You look around, you know, the wearables world right now. You know, look at all the reporting that Lauren Good has done. Fitbit, you know, firing people, jawbone, freaking out, a pebble had to get snapped up. It's not a pretty picture out there. HGC, nope, we're not making Android Wearware. watches. Motorola, nope, we're not making Android wear watches. Android Wear 2.0 itself,

um, hell delayed. And so Apple deserves credit for making a good product that people want to buy. And like you, you look out there at the options. And I always get mad. Like, I would say not very often because they know what they now know what I'm going to do when I get invited on CNBC, which is tell them shut up, Apple is not doomed. But comparing the Apple Watch to the expectations of the iPhone is just fundamentally unfair. I think Apple deeply screwed up the launch of the Apple Watch by raising expectations so high

and making such lofty claims about the future of computing on your wrist. It was a dumb thing to do. Yeah. And now they stopped talking. that way. They made the product decent. And if you've got an iPhone and you are, you know, like, oh, yeah, I might want, like some of that stuff, there's literally nothing else out there that's like even passably good at that combination of like a few smartwatch things and some fitness stuff. Everything else out there is just not good. I mean, Pebble was good, but they couldn't do the

I message and now they're gone. We'll see. I feel like that should be printed on signs, like billboards on the highways of Silicon Valley. Couldn't do the iMessage now they're done like just don't don't try basically yeah ross do you you had one i did have i don't know where it is though i i don't know where it is though i i wore for like six months like i enjoyed it because i could tell the time i can do that's literally any watch though right like it's like it was nice to have i am definitely an early adopter person but once i like dropped it somewhere i didn't miss it right like it only did one or two things Do you ever have one?

No. It's not your thing. I don't do any kind of wearables. I don't want any kind of notifications distracting me because I already am distracted enough on my phone. Yeah. Right. Like if anything comes up a notification,

I have to pull up my phone anyway to respond. I don't need more reasons to look at my phone. Right. Yeah. I feel like we've had this conversation in many forms on the show for like two years. It's like either you're really interested in this or not. If you are, you should get an Apple Watch.

It's like, and I agree with Dieter with WatchOS 3. It's a fine. It's like a fine toy. Right. Like a kind of a nerd play with it. And if I ever find my watch again, I might put it on. I don't know. Maybe. Maybe.

Two other things I want to talk about in Apple and then I'm going to read an ad. One, the touch bar. A bunch of, well, some are lawyers. So it's like nerdy. It's like appeals to me. So when you're a lawyer and you're on graduate from law school, you'll take the bar exam. I am so old that I hand wrote my bar exam on little notebooks. Oh, wow.

Oh, I'm sorry. Were they blue books? I used those. It's fucking PTSD, man. I drank that experience away so fast. I don't know. They were books. I went into a hotel wallroom in Chicago and took the bar exam.

Scantrons too? Sorry. No, I don't know. I honestly, like, I'm trying to remember taking the Illinois bar exam, and I got nothing. It was, and most lawyers that I know feel the same way. It's just like that experience is gone. Wow. I was also quitting smoking during the bar exam preparation period.

Oh dear God. Why? Why would you do it to yourself? My theory was that if I could not smoke during that period in my life, I would never smoke again. And then 10 years later, vaping was invented and fuck everyone. The Pax jewel should be illegal. I'm just putting it out there.

Like, I don't know if Donald Trump listens to this. I don't know if he can regulate one product away. But just if he could send some agents to my house and remove this little nicotine stick, that would be great. Because Lord knows I can't do it on my own. Anyway, the touch bar. So now, like the kids, they take the bar exam on the software called Exam Soft, which is terrible. My wife took it on Exam Soft. Years ago, her computer broke, like a week before the bar exam.

And Dieter gave me his old MacBook error so Becky could take the bar exam. Oh, my God. They don't provide a computer? That seems really bad. No, you bring in your laptop and you run the software called Exam Soft on it. Why can't they just buy a bunch of Chromebooks and... The Chromebooks? I don't know, man.

If you don't have a computer, what do you do? You're screwed. Don't be a lawyer. Borrow Dieter's. I guess. Yeah, I think... Borrow Dieter's, yeah. You're looking to make this of what we did.

It was like one of those moments. Send me a tweet. I was like, Dieter, I can't buy a new MacBook Air. I know new ones are coming out. But my fee house I need to take the bar exam. So, there's a world where like, Becky just didn't have a computer for a bar exam. because the MacBook Air was about to come out. It just wasn't that moment.

I was like, I can't buy one. I'm looking on like Mac rumors. The tractor says I shouldn't buy one. She's got to take the bar. Deeter gave me his old. It was fine. She used it for like years afterwards. Huh?

Why didn't you just do a Patel special, go to Walmart and buy the prettiest one? I don't want to talk to you. It's like, why do we do this show together? It's got a curved screen. Anyhow. I'm so bad. So,

So, Examsoft locks down your computer. Okay. It's the whole thing. Right. So a bunch of bar organizations, state bars, had to issue instructions that to use a new MacBook Pro to take the bar exam, you have to shut down the touch bar. And when you're like scrambling on trying to figure out why, it's because the touch bar shows you predictive text. So if you're really, you're clever enough, you would enter all of the answers to the bar. You enter like full essays into the dictionary of your computer and just like push one button.

Oh my God. And then you would sit there fake time. typing for the next few hours. God, back in my day, we just like program T83 calculators. This is way smarter. Yeah. It's super smart. It's not a good.

Here's the thing. Here's the thing, like, you don't need a touch bar to like fill out your predictive text dictionary. Well, how is you saying, if you're a student and you're taking an exam, maybe, you know, don't do that. But you could. This is why you shouldn't have your own computer. This is why they should provide them. I should be on this board. I could help.

If anyone from the Colorado Board of Bar Examiners is listening, Megan's looking for a gig. I have some good idea. Her main idea is to buy shitbox computers. I'll stop this problem right now. Used for like 12 hours a year.

Okay. There's another Apple thing I want to talk about, but whatever. That was just... Yeah, so speaking of the touch bar, which runs on an arm processor. Oh, that's the thing. Mark German over at Bloomberg

is the thwarting that Apple is thinking about putting yet more arm processors into MacBooks, and it's not going to run. It's not going to be like they're dumping Intel and it's only going to run an arm, but it's going to like run certain functions, especially in sleep mode so you can like continue to get, you know, email and calendar and whatever alerts so that they're there when you wake your computer up. So it will let the thing sleep in the same way that your phone sleeps and some of the apps will be able to communicate with that low power mode, which to me is fascinating. The question is, are they just going to do it?

And then they'll put out, when they do it, their apps will support it. And then the next year, they'll put out an API that says, hey, if you make a Mac app, you can do it the same way. It'll run on our Intel stuff. That'll be fine. But if you compile it with our special thing and do these special other things, your app can run off of the arm processor and it will use less power. And then they wait until they have a critical mass of apps that support it.

And then they just release the arm-based MacBook. It's a way longer timeline. I completely, I think that timeline is like two years long. I think they put out, yeah, I mean, I think you're, I think this is exactly right. They put out the, they put out the hybrid thing. They tell developers, if you, you know, do your app right and set the right flag, it'll run an arm, it'll increase battery life. Consumers will want that.

Right. But obviously that thing won't be as powerful as Intel. But then they just have to wait on Moore's law, right? And eventually it'll be powerful. It'll be as powerful as the MacBook pretty soon. No, I mean, it'll be, I think it'll be like the iPad Pro is way more powerful than the MacBook I'm using right now. Yeah.

And they're both like the most recent generation. The question is like, do they want to cause a convulsion that the way that they did with the switch to Intel way back and like have Rosetta translate stuff? Or are they just going to say these apps support, these MacBooks support the new kind of apps and these, the old ones don't. And so if you want to write to that, write to that. that's question one. How big a change do they want to make? Question two is the question that sounds dumb and I'm about to say it and you're going to tell me I sound dumb but I'm going to say it.

You sound dumb. But here we go. Super dumb. You know what the biggest, most popular arm-based computer platform on the planet is? iOS. You sound dumb. Could they put iOS apps on the Mac? I'm just saying. You sound dumb. This logic is- It sounds dumb. This logic is like a boulder going down a hill. Trying to catch a pass. You're Sisyphus. It's an athletic boulder.

Deflecting a metaphor pass. No, I get what you're saying. I just don't think they're going to do iOS. I think they're going to find a way to move macOS to arm. Yeah. It's the right move. I think this is really clever. This is how they do it.

I think it's very, very, very clever. Okay, I need to read. It's way, yeah, sorry, that's it. It's way nicer than I. expected to be. I expected them to like say, we're doing this in a couple years, get ready, and then everyone's like, ah, and instead it's like, it's like, it's like a Trojan arm processor. Do you know what you should expect me to say right now? Today's episode is brought to you by Crizzal, no glare lenses. No one saw that coming

because you're not wearing Crizzal no glare lenses. Ooh, nice ad lib. I'm doing what I can for this. If your glasses, you know, the fingerprints, scratchers and glares can be a constant obstruction in your vision and a huge distraction. and sometimes you're going to focusing more on what's in your glasses and what's going around you. That's why you should wear Krizal no-glorer lenses. They give you the clearest vision possible by offering resistance to glare scratches and sponges.

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Real proud of you, champ. B plus. What is going on? It's just killing me. All right. So we got to do it. I'm not going to apologize for doing it. I'm just alerting the audience to doing it.

The biggest story in tech this week is not really any of the stuff that we've talked about. It's the fact that it's, what are we at, 14 days in, 12 days in to the Trump administration. Yeah. He's issued a flurry of executive orders. There's one in particular about immigration from seven Muslim majority countries. Companies. The tech industry as a whole has responded forcefully to this executive order.

Literally, as we are coming on to air here, Travis Kalanick, who was on Trump's Board of Economic Advisors, resigned from that board. because he said people took it to mean that I endorsed his policies, but that's not. I just, my goal was to provide advice to the presidential administration, but I don't endorse his policies, and I don't want people to be confused. So he resigned. Dieter, you were at protests, you were reporting on protests at SFO. Yeah. And also just like a random pop-up protest at Google stage.

Yeah, Google employees walked out. They demanded to know. Sergey Brin was actually, you saw him at the protest at SFO. He said, I'm a more. refugee to some other reporters there. He wouldn't talk to me. It was really sad. Comcast. He was running away.

Comcast employees are protesting Trump. Wow. It's disclaimer NBC invest in our company, but that is, I'm just saying if fucking like Comcast is on her, whatever. Jeff Bezos is out against it. Satchin Adela issued a statement. Sundar Pichai, actually Walt wrote a column. soon or emailed Walt with another statement.

Apple, Tim Cook, said they don't support the policy. Reed Hastings said it's un-American, the CEO of Netflix. Just down the line. Alexis Hanyan from Reddit said it's bad. It was like the most viral post on Reddit. My favorite, the CEO of Strava, the run tracking app, tried to run the word freedom. He did a pretty okay job.

I will give credit to Gizmodo for a much better headline than ours. their headline said Strava CEO, Creanum for all, because it just doesn't look like the word freedom. Oh, that's all? No, I don't know what it's supposed to be. I think it's for all.

I was like for. R.U. I think it's for all. Okay. But creanum for you. Well, creedum is like the slogan of the band, creed of course. Creedham.

Creadum. Give me creedom, give me death. But anyway, I will say, unlike many other, industries in America, the tech industry in particular is just out in front in protest of this. And like whether you agree or disagree with the president, it is remarkable that this industry has decided that they don't agree with his stance on immigration. And it is just absolutely the biggest story in tech. So, Deider, you were at the, I kind of want, you were at the protest. What was your sense?

So the two protests I went to, I went to just, you know, document and cover. So I tweeted out basically stuff from it pretty straight. The SFO protest was very long. It was nine hours the first day. And I didn't go to the second day, but that was like four or five, six hours. Sergey Brin showed up. By the time I had like found him in the crowd, he was already trying to leave. And so I'm like, hey, hey.

I was like, do I take a picture or do I ask a question? I only have time for one. And so I asked a question and he said, and he wouldn't talk to me and he left. But, like, he wasn't there, like, chanting and yelling. The Google protest, they did it. It was employee organized. They did it on their main campus in Mountain View

and also at their satellite office in San Francisco and apparently a bunch of other places. And it was, you know, like a, like a protest. People marching and they had signs and they chanted the familiar chants. But at the Google headquarters, it was more interesting because, like, the CEO, CEO got up there and they like brought out a woman who like barely made it into the country and avoided the the travel ban.

And like Sergey Brin actually spoke to to the crowd. So and then the other other tech companies that haven't had like walk out. Although it's funny. Every time we say that they walked out, the companies get mad because like they didn't walk out on their job. They went out to protest because walkout implies you're protesting against the thing you're walking out on. Anyway, what's remarkable.

remarkable to me is watching all of these companies line up against it and they're starting to send letters now and they're sending letters to their employees. When it's like they're spending capital that they maybe could have saved like especially with Apple to like repatriate their money. Yeah. And the the big question now is under Donald Trump, I think the rules of like what effective political action from a company was was pretty clear. And the stuff that these tech companies did would probably have been very effective at pushing their agenda forward. But now the question is, will a bunch of, like, you know, strongly worded letters and statements from CEOs, you know, walkout style protests that are quasi-sanctioned by the tech companies and, you know, a bunch of letters sent to Congress or to Donald Trump directly saying, don't do this? will any of that, those like fairly, you know, mostly traditional, a little bit of non-traditional methods of like corporate political action actually have any real impact.

And if not, and my hunch is like probably not, what is the next step that all of these tech CEOs need to make? And I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I'm with you on the probably not. Although things have been changing, right? Like new guidelines have been issued. there's a little bit of change around the edge of the policy. Yeah, but I mean, I think if Trump wants jobs to come to America,

he needs these companies to participate. And so I think there's a real back and forth there. Megan, you're on like the culture side. What are you seeing? You see it a lot in, like, Hollywood where you see a lot of people speaking up. You see it in the communities and the way that people are fighting, like, all right was just like banned on Reddit. Like there's just, I don't even know where to start.

Like, there's just like so much shit going on. And like, every time I log on on Twitter, past like 5 p.m. It's just like everything is on fire. It's everybody freaking out all the time. I think I saw someone on tour as like three days and Trump is like six weeks. I actually commissioned an article

from our science section about time dilation. Oh my God. Oh, really? Good. Like stress makes you feel like time takes longer. Right. So like Trump years for us like it's already been like six years into his presidency.

It's literally the evil flip side to time flies when you're having fun. Oh God. Like time lasts forever when you're under stress about nuclear war. Yeah, I can't believe it's only been like two weeks. Yeah. But it's a story. And like, I think there's been, I get a lot of email like, why are you covering so much politics? And I can't be like, well, we're going to ignore the CEO of every tech company saying they don't like the president's policy. Like that, even if you narrowly consider the verge to be a tech site, which none of us do, it's just happening. It's, it dominates the news cycle. I said at the top of show, it dominates the news cycle in a way that literally. Literally nothing else I've ever experienced is dominating the news cycle.

The thing is, too, like things that wouldn't usually be political or becoming political. So it's like this week Budweiser released that commercial for the Super Bowl where it's about, you know, their founder having his like immigration story. And normally that's just America because we welcome immigrants or we did until Trump signed the anti-immigration order. And so now it's a very political statement. It's them coming out against it when really they made this ad like months ago. Exactly. Biggest, biggest night for TV. They have a prime time spot to play what's essentially a.

someone of a pro-immigration commercial, and they were just doing it for fun. And, like, they weren't trying to come out and be like, yeah, it's like not usually an issue. It's just like everything is becoming political because we're so divided right now. Right. Yeah. You know it doesn't divide us? Squarespace. Well, it does divide between pages with their amazing tools.

I don't even know Squarespace wants to be associated with that. I just know that we're running out of time. Anyway, my point is, my point is only I've got. a lot of notes. I'm certain some listeners have wondered as they look at the verge, like, why is it dominated by Trump coverage? I will tell you, and Deeter and I've had this conversation a lot. Like, we are on the hunt for gadgets to put on circuit breaker. We are on the hunt for science stories that aren't about lost scientists stranded because their visas got revoked. They're out there. We're looking for them. But there is one focus of the entire tech

industry right now, and that is the presidential administration. And like, I've said it several times now. I've just never experienced anything that has just taken the oxygen out of every other story the way that Trump has taken the oxygen out of every other story, which is he's probably very proud of, just based on what we know of him. But if you're wondering why, it's because the whole tech industry, the science community, as Megan said, like, the internet community. The internet community, the cultural community, the fucking transportation community, that's all of our sections. Everyone's just like paying attention to this and this is all the news that they can generate. So here's a really, really good example of this.

I went to the Zelda Escape the Room thing in San Francisco. And if you're going to go to this thing, stop listening. I'm going to spoil the very ending of it. So it's great. You're in a room for an hour. You're trying to solve puzzles and it's like teamwork. Corray. And at the end, it turns out, spoiler alert, the final puzzle is you have to, like, shade in this piece of paper that you've had with you the entire time. And then it reveals that

there was a Triforce there. And that's how you, like, win. It was in your heart all along. Right. But in order to see it, you have to, like, take the map of the world and, like, and shade it in darkness. And then they played, like, the ending of Okarina. And they, like, changed all the subtitles to like try to match the metaphor of shading the world and darkness. And they had this whole like five minute video game Zelda thing where like Princess Zelda is telling Link in order to survive in the world. You have to understand the most evil man ever and embrace the darkness so that you can continue. We're just like sitting here watching it like, I just want to go play the switch. What are you doing? It's sitting right there. There's half.

happiness right on the other side of this curtain and you're making me watch this? What are you doing? Like everything, literally everything that everybody is doing on the internet today is being put through this Trump lens. And like, it's like basically inescapable. Yeah. I will say that I have chosen to escape it by watching absolutely terrible movies. I just sit in my bathtub for hours and don't look at the internet. Last night I watched We Are Your Friends, which is, With Zach Ephron? With Zach Ephron. With Zach Ephron, it is, as I told Dieter this, it is the 1980s movie Cocktail with Tom Cruise.

We've all seen Cocktail. We've all seen Cocktail. I mean, wait, okay, you are fucking up if you haven't seen Cocktail. It's straight up, cocktail is a great movie. Okay, okay. It's like, it's on the order of Roadhouse. How does it stack up to Demolition Man, though? Cocktails, it's so much better than Demolition.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, do not. Demolition Man is like not a good movie. Hold on, hold on. Both Cocktail and Demolition Man? feature shells. Yes. Teeter. Deeter making the connection.

And Boulder. That is like one of the worst clues to a trivia game ever. Like what two movies have seashells? And like if you came up with cocktail of demolition man, like you should you should be like institutionalized. Anyway. So cocktail is great. Just to put it out there.

We Are Your Friends is basically a remit. make of cocktail, but instead of hot shit 1980s bartenders, they're not good 2010 DJs. Wait. Can I also just say, so earlier you said DJT, and I was like, who's DJ? Is that like a cool? I was like, oh, you mean Trump? You made him sound cool for like a half a second. I like to assign Trump friendly nicknames because I feel like it humanizes him, which is good.

Is it? Well, it lets me engage with like. intellectually, like Donnie. I called Obama Barry all the, I don't know, it's just a thing with me. You bring him down to my level. Barry. Barry?

Yeah. Backwards head, Barry. So Donnie. It sounds so friendly. Anyhow, this is what I'm doing. And it's a horrible movie. Like, it literally, I'm just going to spoil. We Are Your Friends.

Just don't worry about it. Just skip ahead if you really don't want to be spoiled. For We Are Your Friends. Like, literally the, the, the, there's an old DJ and then Zach Efron's like the new hot DJ and the old DJ was like you know teach Zach Efron how to be a good DJ. It's a whole thing. It's bad.

Emily Radikowski is like the old DJ's girlfriend. Okay. He just like sleeps with the other dude's girlfriend and he's like, I'm sorry my friend died, but I have a new song and the old DJ is like, yeah, we're, we're cool again. And then he like plays the song and it ends with like him getting the girl. And it's like, you were just a fucking asshole. Like, this isn't like cocktail at all. I was promised cocktail with T-J's.

No one learned a lesson. You just got everything you wanted. And then you go on medium and you write an angry scribe about millennials. This is how I'm spending my nights. It's bad. Sounds healthy. But I encourage everyone to watch just terrible movies.

This is all you can do. Mm-hmm. I watched, okay, this is even bad. I watched SWAT cats the other night. Swat cat? What? What is that? What?

Wait, do you know what this is? No. This is an old, old cartoon for the 90s. I should have just kept reading the Squarespace ad. Yeah. We're just, just move on from this. All right. We're going to do this, and then Ross is going to have a gadget tutorial.

Please tweet, Megan is at Megan underscore Nicolet. Just tweet what terrible movies you've been watching at her and we'll compile a list. Ooh, please do. Yeah. Last week it was like tweet comments about underpants at her. I got some sweaty shorts comments and a couple demolition man comments. Yeah. So I'm going to sit it up.

I get to get a lot of requests for a straight Demolition Man episode. I mean, it is a great movie. It's not. It's a wonderful movie. It's not. But you should watch Cocktail. I don't want to like... Everyone just sent me your recommendations for things I should watch instead of Cocktail.

But Cocktail is great. Just tip this off, Deli. It is. It is good. I mean, it's no Demolition Man. I don't feel like I'm doing great on this episode. I'd like to apologize to our audience for Megan. On behalf of me.

Okay. Look, today's episode, A Varian Qualification. was brought to you by Squarespace. Whether you finally start a business, change careers, launch a creative project in New Year, which is now. Just sign up for Squarespace, okay? It's widely used by all kinds of people and businesses gives the ability to create an online platform

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That's Verge for 10% off your first purchase. Squarespace, make your next move. Make your next website. You just kept pointing at me. I'm like, do I, am I prompted to do something here? Start a fucking Squarespace blog, man. I'm working on it right now. This is great one.

I've sworn a lot. Is it obvious how much stress this week has caused? Like I literally was like, where is gadget news? Like someone show me some gadgets. And it's like all of Google's employees have walked out. No gadget news will be produced. No. It's not happening.

It's the worst. Ross, you're going to say something else? No, no. I'm just, you keep going. You do your thing. Well, speaking of gadget news, a Miller on the show is required. It's a host a weekly segment, which is called... Gadgetorial?

No. No. Actually, that's the first time it's been called the gadgetorial. Oh, okay. So you're doing great. Great. Cool. I'll call it Counterpoint today.

It's Miller time. Sure, just keep going. So my understanding is... You're like a real Squarespace marketing slogan. Wow. We're just... It's my Dura Flame moment, guys. It's my time to shine.

So my understanding is I get to pick a gadget this week. And everything I say, my opinion, is basically 100% fact going forward. Yes. Great. Cool. So my gadget this week is the UN40K

6250AF, also known as the Neli Curve screen. Oh, God, you're picking... Oh, man. No, I'm here to defend. I am here to defend

the Curve TV because Becky had all the right points, but she had the wrong perspective on this, right? It's a Curve TV. Becky, obviously, Neli's wife, the new editor-in-chief of the Verge. She's great.

She's great. She's a beautiful editorial, but, you know, I feel like she's a reward. She's a review. It's a great view. Look. Curve TV.

So her problem was Curved TV. She's a giant couch. Well, first off, it's not a problem here in New York for most people. And only one good spot on the couch to see the TV. I don't see a problem with that. Look, you bought the TV. You should get the best of you. Everyone else has to suffer, right? Like, that's perfect. I don't want to be your friend. Like, I never want to come watch movies at your place. That sounds like it sucks. But here, I'm also being helpful. Look, there's a lot of glare in the sunlight. You should watch cocktail by yourself. Yes. If you want to watch cocktail by yourself. Yes. If you want to watch cocktail by yourself. You can have the prime spot, okay? And we'll all otherwise watch like the first. What's here the problem. Lots of glare in the sunlight. you know, whatever. The sun causes cancer. Oh my God. You don't want that. This is a great gadget.

This is a great gadget for being by yourself alone in the dark forever. You guys, I just Googled wrong. I just tried to Google Cocktail and I typed in Cocktail.com. I'm doing terrible. Also, cocktail.com, legitimately the best website I've ever seen. Wait, okay, let's see this. Okay, everybody's Googling. Is it better than space jam?

It's not great. Guys. What? It's coming soon. No. Wait, wait. You can pick ingredients. I want...

It doesn't do anything. I want brandy. There's a search box. Just go to everyone, go to cocktail.com. Give them as much traffic as they've ever dreamed in their entire line. Wait, I got one. I got one. What did you get?

I got a BNB. I got a Bittilda. What is Matilda? A buttilda. God. It's Brazilian. You picked Kashasa, didn't you? Can I tell the story about this stupid TV?

I told part of the story on control the week, but I'll say it again. I bought the TV to watch it outside. It's like the most boogie thing in the world to say. I had a boogie week last week. I'm having a boogie week again. We have a sun porch. I wanted to watch a football game. My team won that game, Deere.

I bought a TV to put it outside. That game. Right. So I wanted to only buy the cheapest TV I could get. Okay. That's why, and I was like, this one is fine, whatever, it's curved. It's fun. It'll be funny.

We'll laugh at it. Have you read Theverse.com in the last year? I'm aware that I shouldn't have bought the TV. I knew it at the time. But you didn't take it back. No, because we put it outside. Yeah, it's like shoes. Once you use it outside, it's like you're not allowed to return it.

I don't think you guys are getting returning things. I think I am. I mean, I always say every year at CES, the Las Vegas Best Buy, there's a lot of suspicious returns at the end of the week. But whatever. It was just, it was there. It was take outside, we'll watch outside, put it away. Next week comes, take outside you watch it again.

The thing is, once you have a TV, you can't, like, get rid of it. So now we just have it, and it's cold outside. And we're not watching TV and we're watching TV in the living room. You could give it to some poor family who only has a spot on their couch for one human. Yeah. You know what, pores loves? Curve TV. Isn't the couch that only has a spot for one human called a chair?

I'm just asking how chairs were born. So, like, the TV. We just want a smaller couch. I mean, how small can we make a couch, Thompson? I don't know. We're going to try, God damn it. I have made my couch that it spits too. I call it a love seat.

Make it smaller. Presentations. You thought we couldn't do it. But there's one more thing. It's a chair. We call it chair. Make it smaller. Stools.

We're going to end the episode. All I'm saying is I never intended it to be the main TV. And then once you have a TV, it inevitably becomes the main TV because you can't just buy another TV. No, it's just a marker of your shame. She complained about it so much. Look, I was just going to say this. I asked her to write it. Yes.

So I commissioned it. I edited it, and I chose to publish it. She didn't just bully her way on the front page of the site. Like, the relationship is, I've gotten a lot of notes that are like, I'm worried about your relationship. You should take her out to dinner. What? I'm like, no, it's fine. Like, we think this is hilarious.

Did not expect her destruction of this TV to go viral, which it did. It did. I had to spend a nice, you know, hour or so talking to the good people at Samsung, explaining my wife had reviewed their television. Oh, my God. About contacting them first. She got invited to their next TV launch event party. Really?

Like, we usually don't go to these parties because there's no news. Is it a curved TV? No, it's just like they're having, like, they're like, you know, party for, like, dealers and, like, you know, the corrupt press to go to and, like, drink free booze. And, like, we usually don't go. But I'm going to take Becky. They're like, we'd love to have her. They're like, she can have any TV she wants.

I'm like, that's great for her. But I can't. She has to spend the entire time at the party learning what QLED is. Yeah. And then every other TV manufacturer has offered to let her review a TV. Amazing. Wow. Because I think they're very confident that their TVs are flat.

Like, they know, like, this TV is great. It's not because it's not bullshit, like the other one. So, like, she's got a great, she can quit being a lawyer. Great. And she can move right into evaluating whether or not TVs are curved. It's going to be great. Deeter, I've got a bunch of stuff on this list. I'm just going to read these headlines to you.

Lightning around. And you can, you can offer reactions to them. Yeah, it's a lightning round. All right. Facebook, Zendamax lawsuit ends with $500 million verdict for Zanamax. Megan Deeter your wife works Facebook so you have to remain quiet My immediate response is just damn

And that's it, that's all I have to say That's a lot of money I mean that's not for Facebook Yeah but like that's like one Mark Zuckerberg sneeze Yes but if you took that money and bought Oculus ref headsets that would triple the number Oculus ref headsets in the world Facebook Zuckerberg's like what's the smallest couch we have

Find the change in it It's like it's a chair There's money in the chair I mean it's a lot of money It's great for Xenamax. They can continue not making anything of value. No, no, wait. It's Bethesda, too.

Like, they make, like, they make, why are it's a parent company called Xenimax? Mm. All right. Well, they're fine. I'm not good at naming things clearly. Okay. T-Mobile might not support RCS. This is a pure Deeter.

This is just Dieter red meat. I mean, RCS has made huge, huge strides in the past year towards universal compatibility across carriers and therefore it is only a trash fire right now instead of a full on raging dumpster fire cool job. Razor bought NextBit. What is what is up with Razor? They bought THX. I bought Netflix or NextBit. I don't get it. Like what do you what's the plan here? Also, uh, the next bit phone was cool. It looked pretty. And, uh, the aesthetic of the next big phone and the aesthetic of Razor are so wildly different. I have no idea what the plan is there.

Yeah, one is like very twee and looks like it's made for people who like journaling. And Razor's product looks for like they're for murderers. Right. That's not like a... You put those things together and you, I think you arrive pretty much at serial killers. Yeah, like journaling murderers. The show is over. It's been here.

We would like to think. thank the excellent people at Krizal, who I'm assuming have just never listened to the show, but they continue to sponsor us with their no-glare lenses. So thanks to them, if you wear glasses, you know, about the smudges and the bullshit. Kri-al doesn't have any of that. They give you the clearest vision possible by offering resistance to glare, scratches, and smudges. So look better, feel better, and most importantly, be prepared for whatever comes your way with ClearVision. Go to Kri-Z-L and start living life in the clear. Krzal.com. Great. There's a million other ways to get a of us. You can follow at Verge on Twitter. You're at, we're Verge on Snapchat. We're at Verge on

Instagram. We're on iTunes. You can listen to Control Alt Delete, which, uh, Walt is a, he's much more organized in his conversation with me than I allow this group to be. Uh, you should listen to Verge extras, uh, this week. Lauren Grush, our excellent space reporter interviewed her parents, who are both fucking rocket scientists who worked on the Columbia shuttle mission and like figuring out what went wrong. It's the anniversary of that disaster. So like, listen to that. All that's at the verge.com slash podcast. There's also too embarrassed to ask more and good. Recode decode with Kara Swisher,

recode media with Peter Kafka. All of that is on the recode side. All of it's on iTunes. Go rate it, review it. You can also rate us directly on Twitter, which I know we all enjoy. I'm at Reckless. Ross is, oh no, Roscoe.

Megan underscore Nicolette, an app backlon for Dieter. Just come talk to us. We apologize for this episode. That's the Vergecast. You don't. I'm proud of it. Defiantly.

Also, next week we'll be talking only about Cocktail and Demolition Man. Yes. Megan, you're coming back to just do 45 minutes on cocktail. I'll be back. Just the website, though. What's your favorite Tom Cruise movie? I really like Edge of Tomorrow. Whoa.

Wow. Wow, modern. Modern cruise. What is that? A shocker. You know, he did a really good movie called Legend, which is just like a Zelda movie. It's like a really old. You are like pulling out the deep cuts.

Go recent, go very old. Yeah, it's like Tim Curry, who. who's like the devil, like literally like a devil. He's these crazy horns. I'm pretty sure Tom Cruise wears like a skirt, like a battle skirt. It's great. It's an awful movie.

No, it's a, how dare you? How do you know about the wardrobe in that movie, but you haven't seen cocktail? All right. Does cocktail watch cocktails? That's your, the answer is no. This is your assignment for the week, staff and listeners of the Vergecast alike.

Watch cocktail. It will calm you down. It's a picture of a vibrant go-go-80s America. You can think of it as we are your friends, but I said DJs. It's a bartender. That's so interesting. I've never heard that before. That's it.

That's a rich cast. Cut through the night. Rock and roll. Snip-snip. Rock and roll. Just catchphrases galore. Go watch cocktail. Goodbye.