The Vergecast - So much news this week and more to come next week

Episode Date: June 10, 2016

Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Dan Seifert sit down and don't know where to start so they bring in Paul Miller and Loren Grush to help them out. The gang talks Lenovo Tech World, Nest, WWDC, Game of Thrones and much much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's really weird to start this without the music. I have to be up. Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Theverge.com. This episode of The Vergecast is brought to you. Wait for it. By Cizzer Vodka. There's that joke again.

It's never going to die. Cizzer vodka, a vodka brand that I made up. Someone just pay me for it, and then these ads will be real. Cisor vodka. Cut through the night. You know what? I instinctively may still make scissors motions with my fingers. Even though there's no camera to record.

There's no camera. I'm gonna do it. I also notice that you have no camera to look into you, so you just stare me in the eye as you deliver your scissor vodka. Dan, here's what I wanna know. You went to this Lenovo event, you saw this Motorola phone or Modo phone with that headphone jack,

and I don't have a video of you angrily spiking it into the ground because it's stupid. Yeah, a Motorola. And it's not Motorola anymore, right? All right, it's Lenovo. Hi, I'm Neil Appetel. I'm the editor of The Verge. This is a podcast from Theverge.com

that we talk about technology, culture, dumb product decisions. Dieter Bone is here in studio. Hello. Back from Silicon Valley. Yeah, I'm going back to Silicon Valley. Silly Silicon Valley. Dan Seaford is here. I'm here.

First up, Paul's going to be on the show for a little bit later on. Lauren Grush is going to be on the show for a little space adventure. We're going to shoot her in space on the podcast. That's going to be great. But a bunch of news. Tons. Tons of news. Newsie week.

news a year and next week even more news. You might almost say we're in the news business. Yes. Yes, I might. Let's make a hard choice here. Do you want to start with Alphabet and Nest? Do you want to start with Apple and the App Store and WC coming next week? Dan did a bunch of motophone stuff with Nick Statt did a bunch of motofone stuff this week. E3 is next week.

Just, I mean, just the code conference was last week. We taught, we had a, I don't remember. We had like a PTSD code conference podcast, but there's stuff to talk. but they're still, like, we didn't even get into all of it last week. The Tribune Media Company renamed itself Tronk. Let's start with Apple. Yeah. Because I actually think the Motorola Google stuff is sort of of a piece.

And I'll explain why I want to get there. But let's start with Apple. So, WWC is next week. My instincts about WWDC tell me it will pretty much be focused on Apple's platforms. I don't think they're going to do anything except talk to developers about how to build new kinds of apps on their platforms. I think all the sort of hardware stuff is going to be. pushed out to back to school time, which sucks because I desperately learned a new MacBook Pro. But that's just my guess. What's really interesting about it is for the first time ever

that I can think about, Apple came out ahead of WWC. Phil Schiller sat down with Lauren Good and said, we're making big changes to how we do pricing in the App Store. They're pushing the entire app store towards subscriptions. And there's a lot of, even though she spent, it's a great piece and you should read it. He also talked to John Gruber. He talks to John Gruber. He talks to Jim Dalrymple. Jim Dalrypole. He talked to Renee, I'm Moore. He basically said the same thing.

He didn't like read it. It's like very interesting that the Schiller bot like turned on like a chat bot and was like, and spit out the same information everybody. There's a lot of questions here. But the basic facts are they are not going to do paid upgrades, which is something that a lot of developers have asked for in the app store. They're not doing it. They're not going to do trials, which something else people really want.

To an extent. If you do the subscriptions, there's some footnotes in there about if you. You could subscribe and then unsubscribe. and you only end up paying probably a month. I think they're in the in the documentation that I read yesterday. Right. So there's all these open questions. But let's get out to sort of the high points.

So no, instead of doing trials and paid upgrades, which is sort of the obvious thing people wanted. Instead, Apple is saying the future of this is subscription pricing. And so right now a bunch of apps like, I don't know, Spotify, whatever. Well, Spotify is like, thanks, but no thanks. Well, right.

But like you can subscribe to things in the app store. Right. and Apple will build you. Hulu. Right. So previously it was like cloud services and like content. Although there's a little bit of a question

with this, but now Apple is saying basically any app, like for example, games can like move to a subscription model. So for us to say they're moving the whole app stores to subscriptions is, I don't know,

a little bit of putting like words in their mouth because like the old way of buying apps is still going to be there. Yeah. But the need from developers to figure out a real sustainable business model because nobody's downloading apps anymore

because the growth of iPhone sales is slowing. It's still massive, but it's going to plateau at some point in the near future. It means that those developers need to figure out some way to continue to make money off of the app store because they can't just lean on the fact that there's X million, 10, 20, 50, 100 million new iPhones to sell to every quarter. I don't think, I think it's more fundamental than that. Well, so what I'm saying is like the need is so high for some kind of model that is better than, what they currently get from the app store. Right.

That I think it's a pretty safe bet that we're going to see a lot of people trying out this new subscription model. Well, I sat down with Microsoft, I mean, it's ages ago now, because since then, office is on the phone or everything. But ages ago, I sat down to Microsoft and said, why isn't Microsoft office on the iPhone? And the answer I got was no one has built a software business in mobile. Like the traditional, you pay $100 for Microsoft Office, and a couple years later you pay 50 bucks for an upgrade style of business did not happen in mobile right no one will pay those prices

yep at all yeah just the idea of a $29 app on a phone like or even on a tablet like like tablet like tablet apps come on so that's a big problem right because the app store was supposed to be the future of the software industry what actually happened is that this combination of cloud services and office has become a software as a service right subscribe to 365 you get the apps. You subscribe to, I don't know, Google apps, you get all the apps for free. If you're a business. I'm trying to think. Photoshop. Creative Client. That's the one I'm thinking.

Those are the big, the big two plus Google. But those were the massive software businesses that sold packaged apps in a box and you like load 50 floppy disks or like four CD-ROMs. Anyhow, so Apple's saying, we got to figure out how to build businesses in the app store.

We can't, we don't want to do this old model where we charge upgrade prices. Because what is the upgrade pricing for a $2 app? Right, right. It doesn't make any sense. So they're going to this model where, and the apps update far more quickly. There's an incentive for developers to constantly be rolling out updates because the distribution is better.

So it sounds like their plan is the app developers and say, we're going to build you $2 a year and just roll out updates all year, which evens out the revenue curve. Doesn't piss off users because they're getting new stuff. Well, we don't know. But theoretically, won't piss off users because you'll just subscribe to an app and like and you'll just constantly get updates. And there won't be like tweet bot two is out and it costs $12 and screw you or whatever. That all seems like a good idea. We've seen some apps try, especially on the Mac, try to go to subscription and there has been like backlash.

So I think like some some companies are probably going to dip their toes in a little bit and see how it goes. But it seems like this is the only way to like get out of the corner that developers are in right now. Especially like middle class developers. The example that I think of, because it just recently happened. and it's a weather app, is Dark Sky launched on Android with this exact subscription model. You pay $299 a year, and you get the full Dark Sky experience. And every year you're paying $299 again, and it finances their servers and their continued updates or whatever.

Now, as far as the response from people, the biggest backlash was that Android users were pissed that they had to pay a subscription, and iOS users didn't. But the reality is that Dark Sky probably would have launched a subscription on iOS had they been able to by now. Well, my stupid alarm clock app has a subscription in. I don't know why, but I'm paying $2 a year for different beeps. Sleep cycle, by the way, is a great app. They just conned me.

They're like, you can have this sound or a custom sound for $2 a year. And I was like, I love customizing things. I push the button, and I use the default sound like a chunk. So if anybody wants to send me a sound for my alarm clock, I'm happy to take it. We'll see if it works. So my mind is like...

Wait, we've got the most important thing. The most important thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're changing the revenue share. Yeah. So the App Store launched in 2008. Steve Jobs is like, we're handling all your distribution, revolution. All we request is 30% of your price, which was great at the time, has come to be known as the App Store tax.

Yeah. Apple now saying, if you hold on to a customer for more than a year, we still want the 30% of that subscription price in the first year. But every year subsequent, we'll cut it in half and only take 15%. You keep 85% Which is yet another incentive for... This is why I feel totally fine saying Apple wants to push everybody to subscriptions because they're giving a real monetary incentive to developers to, like, switch to this model. Right.

Right. Yeah, and then Google immediately came out and said, well, what if we just do it right away? We only want 15% right away because... Well, I will say that Google hasn't officially announced that that was some intrepid reporting from our recode colleagues that dug up that story. But yeah, it looks like Google's going to do the same thing, but slightly better. Fucking Mark Bergen.

Mark Borgon, I think, is one of the best Google reporters out there, so whatever. So, okay. And now they're in the family, so we just ruthlessly link post is reporting on the verge. Which is great for everybody. Which, hey, we could aggregate it. It's all in the family. All right. Mark, if you're listening, just know that I'm clocking you.

Keep doing a great job. Or I'll find you. I've got to stop threatening Mark Bergen. You just can't stop threatening him. Someone get me out of this threatening loop. Imagine renting your apps instead of buying them. Like that's like the logical endpoint of this thing. That feels weird, but I guess it should feel fine.

I don't know. I mean, we've gotten used to renting our music. We've gotten used to renting all of our content. Yeah. I'm not surprised that we're going to eventually wouldn't be surprised that we shift to. Are you going to enjoy like checking your manage my subscription screen twice a month because you're going to be subscribing to things at different points in the month? No.

Is that a fun idea for you? I think the way that this will work for most people is if it's a yearly subscription. I can't imagine most people wanting to spend a monthly subscription for average apps. Like a few bucks a month. But like a yearly subscription, you pay it. And then it's like, oh, well, I kind of like got a whole year out of that. So I don't mind paying another five bucks for next year. But like depends on the price that they pay.

Like, it's like 99 cents per month. Like 99 cents is like the magic number that makes you just click buy, right? Yeah. But that's like that works at like 12 bucks a year. Like that's expensive for an app. When you're used to paying 99 cents for an app period. Like you pay 60 bucks for an Xbox game. Sure.

Right. Well, yeah, I think it'll be monthly for games. I can see that. Yeah. Yeah. What I, this thing you said about renting most of our content, usually what you rent is a huge bundle. Right. Yeah.

You pay Spotify and it's like all over the world's music. Right. You pay Netflix and it's all over the videos. Here it's just one app. I can't imagine that the next step isn't Apple saying pay us $24 a month and get access to essentials or productivity. I mean. Deere called it apps as cable TV. Yeah, stealing my line.

Sealing my thunder. I was working up to it. Do you want to rewind? We're pre-taped now. We can just... Oh, we shouldn't do that. No, so, like, the basically, like, especially on, like, an Apple TV, like, apps become, like, channels. And you just, I can't do it because you just did the whole thing. No, I don't think they've bundled... I disagree about the app channel thing.

You're, like, renting access to the content of an app, basically. But the thing that, like, I don't know. have the whole same cable problem of like I have to pay my cable operator for four channels I want. I get 60 that I don't want. Right. And now it's like the best deal for me to get these apps is in this bundle, but I get like five apps I don't really care about. Yeah, but that's it. That's the move.

It's absolutely the move. I don't, the Apple TV apps as channels things is different because when you, when you subscribe to the CBS now app, you just get CBS content. But the thing that's the same is that. You don't get CBS and NBC. With a channel that you pay for on cable, you know that if you stop paying for it, you know, you don't get that channel anymore. And like that makes sense. But typically with an app,

if you like decide to stop paying to not get the upgrade, app still works, right? Like the idea that in order to use some of these apps that you need to continually pay for them and if you stop paying for it, the app suddenly goes away or becomes useless is a weird thing.

It's like not the way that you like to think about your phone. Right. And on top of that, if a bunch of your like most important apps all move to subscription, like you're, your phone suddenly starts costing more month per month. Yeah.

It costs more to use a phone than it used to. It used to be, you know, in the aggregate, maybe it was the same because you buy the app and then you don't pay attention. And if you add up all the apps, you buy it a year, blah, blah, blah. But now it's like you look at your phone and you've got your phone bill. And now you've got your app bill. I think there's, I think this bet is entirely about enterprise and professional apps.

I think so too. I don't think it's about everybody else is going to, if it works, it's the only, it's the only option they're giving to, developers, if a developer wants to offer paid upgrades, or if a developer wants to, like, fund the continued, like, bug fixes and changes to the game, there's no other option. Apple is not giving the other things that developers have been asking for. Right. You got to giving subscriptions.

I'm teeing you up. You received an email that I'd like to hear about. I received an email. I emailed a game developer, uh, or PR, and I was like, oh, what, what do you think of this? You're going to do it? And this person, uh, from this company, which I can't name, said that's the Verge story, Lawrence Verge story hit the mobile games world like a nuclear bomb. Yeah, because it changes their entire model.

Yeah. All that free to play stuff is like they're going to try out subscriptions. Instead of like trying to trick you into blah, blah, blah, blah, they're just going to, instead of like, I'm going to spend a dollar for like 10 coins or 10 extra lives. They'll just be like, oh, like here's the basic game. And if you want all this cool stuff, pass. There are some games that are free to play where like, yeah, I'm not going to like spend a buck to like get 10 extra lives because that seems really like cheap.

and, I don't, manipulative, like, oh, this level's too hard. You made it hard on purpose, so I'd have to buy lives. I hate you. But if, like, you get a bunch of little, you know, spliffs for just paying a buck a month, yeah, I'm totally going to do that. What if we rename Free to Play is pay to cheat? What if we do that as a culture, as a society? Pay to win?

Yeah, because it's like, oh, this is really hard, and you can pull it off if you... For me, that would be, like, pay to beat Deeter's high score. Oh, that'd be great. there are some games where I'm not like the king of the mountain anymore. So I'll have to go find those games. Yeah. What you're saying. I started playing Alto's Adventure the other day again.

Oh, well, I am King of the Mountain on Alto's Adventure. Yeah, just don't look at Deuters. Although Heim, Heim Gardenberg, intern at theverse.com. Unbelievable high score in Alto's Adventure. Like, he like kept a run going for like two hours, I think. It's just out of bounds. We should find more for Heim to do, right? First I'm coming for Heim, then I'm coming for you, and then Mark Bergen.

you're in my sites. So this is a huge change in the App Store. It kind of does set up the question, though, and we should do this a little bit. What the hell are they going to do next week? Right. Because if the biggest news about distributing and monetizing software, which is what developers care about, is happening the week before. And then on top of it, and we've talked about this on this show forever, Apple doesn't

really have an AI thing. Well, they have Siri. Yeah, but. So this is the, like, we should go through the rumors. They have a lot of yabob. right like yeah they have Siri but they have you should just say bunny bunny yeah if you can't pronounce rabbit never mind I don't know that was that was a reach I know where you're going with it can't say you can't say rabbit yeah but they have a lot of yeah buts oh my god

shout out to my high school girlfriend for coming up with that joke this broadcast took a real turn I just started pre-recording it so okay Apple's got a lot of a lot of BOR AR I haven't seen peep about VR air at WDC they have the Apple TV which is a buggy mess, right? It's buggy mess. Okay. And I don't think apps in the Apple TV are very discoverable, very useful, very charitable. And you know why? Because the remote sucks. Yeah, I mean, it'd be amazing if the Tim Cook came on stage and held up the Apple TV remote and was like, this was a mistake. Yeah. We didn't learn the lesson about one-to-one control on a remote on a TV that we should have from the we, but we shipped it anyway. Yeah. Apple TV is a huge platform,

TVOS. I would say it's probably the smallest of all of Apple's probably. Questioned in Apple's probably Apple Watch watch watch watchOS man got to do something there they got to do so much there the default opinion on the Apple watch is they like they basically made like 10 mistakes how much how much of that and I know the answer some but like how much of that can be solved with software versus they just need more powerful hardware in the watch like the biggest complaint is that it's slow no there's a lot complaint is that like there's too many ways to navigate it, which they could fix. They made a bunch of bad bets. Like the contacts button, bad bet. The app, the digital crown. The digital crown, bad bet. The seven different ways to interact with it. Seven different ways interact with

the bad bet. And there's only so many of those bets that they can walk back. Yeah. Right. Like, what's probably going to happen is they're going to keep it or any on it. It'll be a little bit faster. We'll wait for new hardware that speeds it up. But they're going to like stick with like the core metaphors of it. But what they ought to do is they ought to just like hardware exists. and we're just going to rethink the whole damn thing. Yeah. But I don't see that in the cards. Maybe not for this a W.

They need a new watch. Yeah. Even when they do a new watch, they might do. Anyway, so they've got two nascent platforms that they have to say something. Yeah. So that's out there. Then obviously iOS, something will happen there. And they'll add capabilities to iOS.

What are they going to add to iOS? And they could open up Siri. There's one. We've heard that rumor. But that is, like, the big question, because everybody else has announced all their AI, IA, Intelligence Assistant, artificial intelligence bot stuff, right? So like Apple's next and the rumor is that they're going to open up Siri to

with an API and I don't know, like maybe they'll call it apps because everything in Apple ends up being an app or whatever. So that's fine, but is Siri a different, is Siri a platform in the way that like iOS, TVOS, blah, blah, blah, blah are a platform? Because for Google, Google Assistant is a platform. For Microsoft, they're building up like a, I don't even know if to call it a platform, but there's like Cortana,

and then there's like this whole like middle layer and then there's the stuff that talks to it. And to me, like especially since one of the other rumors of Siri's coming to the Mac, like they need to stop thinking of Siri as like a piece of iOS. They need to think of Siri as their next like OS. They're like cloud OS or whatever you want to call it. It's not an OS.

Like the metaphors get fuzzy, but they need to decouple Siri from iOS in order to, make it work on the Mac, basically. Right, so you can log in the Siri and say, I want to use this weather service. Yeah. And it's open. And you don't have to have that app on your Mac or whatever, right?

The back end knows you. That's a thing. So that's a huge question there. What else are going to do with iOS? Will they do any VR-A-R stuff with iOS? Seems like a no. Seems like a no. It just seems like a no.

But it's a question. The rest of the industry is pushing in that direction. OS 10, potentially renamed to Mac OS. And what does that come with? Is it going to be? Siri, they're going to have. Ad Siri. I mean, that's the big. They're going to add Siri and name.

We think they're probably going to do some stuff on the photos app on both iOS and Mac OS. Yeah, but like the point that we're waiting for is we're waiting for iOS and Mac OS to like bridge together in ways that they haven't yet. And so is it too early for that or is that? I don't think they can do that until they make a touch screen laptop. I don't think they're going to make a touch screen laptop. Yeah. No. I mean, the Android on Chrome OS stuff is so good because it's apps and you can use them naturally.

I think that's going to prove the model. more so than macOS gaining some more iOS features I use that it's not just like yeah two yesterday yeah and the whole time I'm like man why aren't why aren't Android apps here yet yeah it's exciting for it and also I mean it's mostly to school so it doesn't really count but Chromebooks outselling macOS computers yep in the United States there's it's a thing they've they've got to come back to that market a little bit tablet stuff what I mean that would be part of whatever update to iOS they might try and further the stuff they've been doing with iPads and education.

They had a thing not too long ago that they're better for multi-user for education. If they can add proper actual multi-user support, especially to tablets, I'll be pretty excited. Because right now it's limited

in this weird education zone. It's the thing. For the longest time, Apple's game was putting out a product that was complete with an obvious omission and then announcing the inclusion of the omission

and making you cut up by the new version of the product. Yeah, but now that is their game, right? But they've got a new game now, and the new game is they have a complete product, and they're going to start omitting things like the headphone jack. This fall. Bergen, you're no longer number one in my list. I don't know why.

So anyway, to finish this point about Apple, real quick, this is the first WWC in a long time where I can't tell you what the obvious additions to their two main platforms should be aside from Siri coming to the Mac. Well, and Siri, like, leveling up. Yeah, and seriously becoming open and having, like those are, that's the obvious thing they're going to do. You're going to announce a speaker? No. Yeah.

So I think, I don't, I don't think they are either. I think, I think they have to get. If they do. If they do. Oh, Apple Music. That's what I mean. Oh, they're going to clean up Apple music. Yeah.

Okay. Clean up. Burn it down and start over. But if they do do. They're killing connect. I mean, like the optimist in me thinks that if they do do a home connected Siri device, if it's a speaker or something else, it's going to be a one more thing. They show it on stage and a quick. slide and then it's like see you later next year or like end of the year we're going to tell you

more about it like they did with the mac pro right they showed it really briefly and then it was months later that they i mean they could if they're really working on one they might want to try and get they can't get it out there before google home no they can't do that i don't think they that's on apple doesn't care about being first either so like no no but they can't they can't with the mac pro tiny market old mac pro had been around for 400 years i believe yeah i mean it was literally like a walking skeleton of a dinosaur and it i believe it ran on a Pentium chip at that time. I mean, it was like, it was so old.

A Dorito. And the market's so small that Apple had nothing to lose by saying we have a cool new product for you. Look at how sweet it is. And then we're going to let that one age. We're going to let our all in one computer outshine that one. This is true, by the way. I don't know if listeners know this.

Our video staff edits on IMAX, not pros. I mean, the only people that prefer the pro are the people using Final Cut or whatever, like any Adobe house. uses an iMac yeah anyhow so but they were able to do that because they weren't cannibalizing any sales they weren't making a promise it couldn't keep i think if they're gonna do a series speaker they'll announce it in classic apple fashion it will be real it will work and you'll buy it in 10 days and yeah and the key the key to that is they'll open up Siri now developers will be participating in it and then right holiday time the foreshadowing well they open up Siri enough so that you

can actually just use it with google stuff no no I mean that's that's the thing that I want like I've got Siri on my watch and I've sidebar the thing that actually bugs me the most about intelligent assistance is crappy microphones that's like I'm getting more and more convinced that's the reason Alexa is so great is that it just it straight up has good microphones because when the watch or your phone on either Google or Apple actually hears you it's like fine as good on microphones that are always listening to the problem is that the phone or the watch have to spool up and like that's the problem because you're not going to stop talking yeah yeah uh no i just they're gonna the speaker's a splash your product for holiday if they do a speaker this year just like i'm pretty sure they'll do new

max for back to school because that's the obvious time to do new max and they'll do an iPhone in september because that's when they do the lord hath decreed an iphone shall arrive in september remember when it used to be in the summer yeah that's a wild wild time yeah that's just my take it's they're going to do a bunch of software stuff they're in a moment for better or worse they're in a moment, and we've talked about that, you know, there's Google I.O., there's Microsoft Bill, there's the Facebook thing, there in a moment when everyone else has gone first and said, here's our 10-year vision. And mostly what they were saying is the iPhone one, we understand the iPhone, that's great, it's over there, Apple's doing great with the iPhone,

here's our vision for what's next. Ambient computing around you with artificial intelligence. But Apple's game is not to declare a grand vision, right? They're like, here's our next product. This is like, this next product is the vision. This, this, this, this, This is the future of laptops. This is a future of that. But they don't do what Zuckerberg or Google did where they like, here's our 10-year plan. Yeah.

Right? Like... I mean, to be clear, Steve Jobs would get on stage and say, today Apple reinvents the phone. But they do it with like a thing. I'm saving the magazine industry with the iPad. Tim Cook did it with the watch. I mean, the watch event was as much a statement

of where Apple thought the next 10 years would go as anything. They built a spaceship and filled it with celebrities. Yeah. They sent a supermodel running through Africa. to prove that heart rate tracking was valuable to you on a smart watch. This is a true thing that they did. Yeah, I know. It was very weird.

Yeah. Bono was there. He's always there. I don't know why I said that. He's omnipresent. He's just there. He's in your iTunes. He's on your computer.

Apple doesn't do like Kitchen of the Future like Microsoft did at CES every year. Right? No, it's true. They do have a very different style. I just think in this moment when everyone else is talking for better or worse about chatbots that don't work so great, an AI that isn't ready, they're not, they're not being expansive. This is an opportunity for them to be expansive.

I hope they take it. I just hope they're exciting. I'm very nervous that this is going to be a very dry WWDC. And I want to be exciting because they rolled out the big news first. I guess. Why roll out the big news first if you're not jam packed in the keynote? I guess. I mean, yeah, that could be it.

But it's also jam packed because they have, what, an hour or an hour and a half to do this keynote? They got to cover all their platforms. They've got like seven different platforms to cover. So they got to talk about all of them. They got to talk about how great they are and how great, how many stores are opening and how many, you know, humanitarian and environmental things they're doing. So that all takes up time.

So I don't know. I just want, excite me, Apple. We'll see. And then, you know, Deeter and I are going to be there. Lauren, it'll be there. Walt will be there. Walt will be there. Also, the same day, again, is Microsoft C3 event, Sony's E3 event.

Monday's going to be bonkers. Here's what I want you to do, dear listener. Take Monday off. Take Monday off. If you're not in school, I hope. If you're not in school and you don't work for the verge, take the day off. Yeah, if you work for the verge, you must work on Monday. You, if you, yeah, you got to be here. Everybody else take the day off and read the verge.

Okay, so here's what's going to happen. I'm going to read this ad for Ero. We're going to have a little Paul Gadget moment. Yeah. We're going to come back and we're going to talk about Lenovo. We're going to talk about Nest and Google. Then we're going to do some other stuff. There's a lot more to talk about.

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There's dead zones. There's buffering. It's afflicting far too many of us. We've become used to it, except that bad Wi-Fi is right, just the way things are. But ERO was designed to change all this. The company manufactures a single device, a small, elegant box by the size of an Apple TV. And with the help of their app, you put EROs throughout your home. The first one replaces your existing router and is Ethernet wired to your cable or DSL.

The additional EROs just need power for an outlet. They mesh network together and they blanket your home in fast, reliable Wi-Fi. If you ever try to give your router a boost with a range extender, then you've experienced true disappointment. That's because extenders can only stretch your signal a single hop. You can't connect multiple in rail like you can with ERO. Extenders often cut your bandwidth in half because they rely on. and a single wireless radio. But in contrast, each ERO has two radios,

both of which communicate with your devices and sync with the other ERO, so your connection is always fast. Range extenders also require an entirely separate SSID, so you find yourself having to continually switch from one network to another. This is true.

This is how my parents' house is wired and sucks. But ERO operates on a single network name throughout your entire home. It's just one network. So, after all of that, what I encourage you to do is buy an ERO. Just buy one. See, this is why we're not buying.

For free overnight shipping, visit ERO.com slash Verge. Oh, there it is. So here's what I only do. Shut your mouth and buy an error. Stop complaining about your Wi-Fi. Get it done. You get free overnight shipping, go to ERO.com slash Verge and check out, select free overnight

shipping and then enter Verge and then it's free, the shipping, the ERO still costs you money, but then it'll be your house the next day, you'll plug it in, throw out your old Wi-Fi router and then your life will be better because of ERO. That's it. ERO.com slash verge. Paul is here. Hello. Paul Miller.

Hey. How's it going on, man? Good. How are you? I'm great. You're here now. It's going to be a thing. I hear you're renaming your segment this week.

Yet this week it's called gadget surprise. Ooh. We're ready. Does it have whipped cream on it? All right. So as you know, oh my God. It's like a casserole. Is there corn in it?

Because I hate corn and casseroles. Also, it's slightly booze. No spoilers. No spoilers. No spoilers. No spoilers. All right, Paul. Paul, as you may know, is the editor of our sugarbreaker breaker gadget blog.

one of my favorite bits of the verge. Paul, tell us about your surprise. This week, we have an iPhone case that runs Android, and it turns your iPhone, intern Android phone. Without any old Android phone. A slow Android phone running AOSB. A really slow, bad Android phone. But these are among your favorite circuit breaker items, aren't they?

Yeah, well, so there's kind of a larger story here. We might have, like, a greatest hacker alive situation. because this is done by this guy named Nick Lee, who is also the person who put Windows 95 on an Apple Watch. Ooh. And he just loves slow computers. But what can he do with an HECD2? Wait, the HGC, HD2, we used to run like literally every operating system.

That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. I want to see watchOS running on an HD2. You don't want to see watchOS running anymore. Windows 95 on the Apple Watch, legitimately more useful than watch. WatchOS. Go ahead, Paul. We'll call him on his Android and iOS phone and make some requests. But anyways, yeah, so he got a reference board that runs Android.

He wrote a bunch of custom software. He's not just plugging stuff together. Like, he's really doing some custom work here. He wrote a bunch of custom software that basically streams the screen over USB, over the lightning plug to the iPhone. So you run an iPhone app and then you see what is on Android and you send your touch events. And yes, it's slow and bad and useless. But also you get a whole HTML jack because Android has that. And it's not even the biggest case ever.

It's pretty big, man. Isn't it like 3D printed? Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, it's about the size of like a big battery pack. Yeah. But it destroys your battery. Paul, let me ask you a question.

Greatest hacker alive situation. That's what I want to get into. Who was the previous greatest hacker alive? Steve Wozniak. Ben Heck. Yeah, I was going to go, Ben Heck. I went to Ben Heck's house in Madison. Years.

I've heard of the name of years. And there's also Geohot. But GeoHot went mainstream. Yeah, he was super mainstream. He took that VC money. He's driving Lexuses around with no hands. GeoHot. George Hots is the CEO of comma.aI, the self-driving car company.

They're going to sell you a kit for $1,000. It makes your car sell driving. We did a video with it. Yeah. Michael Zanko did it this week. Was it this week? Action-packed week at the verge. So Paul.

I've been thinking about that a lot, and I think he's actually doing like a great. I doubt it's going to be the best self-driving car, maybe not even the top 10. But I love that Gio Ha is giving, I don't know. If you buy a car, you should be able to hack it and put irresponsible software on it just like the manufacturer does. That's true. How many? There's like two different car stores. is where an OTA update bricked cars this week, right?

Or is it Lexus had a problem? Was it Lexus twice? Yeah. I mean, no. Anyway, Lexus has got bricked. So why not use Geohuts software to control your Lexus? I'm with you. I can't wait to hack my car.

Yeah. Because you're just tired of punching it. I did punch it to fix it. It's at the shop right now. It's getting a whole thing replaced. It's a whole thing. So, Paul, you're going to stick around because I want to talk to you. I want you around for this next piece of news, which is really interesting to me.

And this is why I want to talk about Nest and Google and Lenovo all in the same breath. Here's my theory right now. Google bought Motorola. Yeah. For a variety of reasons, patents, scaring Samsung, what have you. But they bought a hardware company, blew it, just like utterly blew it with that hardware company. Lost something like $12 million.

$12 billion. Kept a bunch of patents, did in fact scare Samsung into something with TouchWizz. D-Samsonging TouchWiz a little bit. Sold Motorola to Lenovo. Motorola no longer exists. It's now just like a little bit. label that's being glued on a Lenovo phones. They held onto the interesting part of Motorola and sold the rest to Lenovo.

So the actual part, the patents. They held of ATAP too. Atap. Yeah, but Ria is gone, right? Even the person who's there to make interesting hardware took off. Yeah. Anyway, so that Google, and so Lenovo put out new modophones. Danny, you want to talk about those real fast?

Yeah, so it's a Moto Z, droid edition and Moto Z, forced droid edition. Force droid? MotoZ force, comma, droid edition. because they are launching as Verizon exclusives this summer. Nothing like a carrier exclusive. Nothing like a carrier exclusive to bring you back to 2011. Wait, is it actually called Moto Z droid edition? Yeah.

Of course it's. We are back in the world of phones that have like 50 words in their name. Moto Z Force. It's unfortunately, it doesn't say like 4GLT. Come on. Do you remember when everything was 4G touch? That was just a terrible time in our lives. We're like, that's acceptable.

Just put the word touch on the name of every name. Just at the end of every name. So the pitch with these phones is that they have these attachable accessories that snap to the back through magnets. And they communicate with the phone itself through these pogo pins. So you can add a battery or you can add an external speaker. You can add a projector. You can add whatever else they think of. The phones and cells are wildly thin with a big camera home and terrible battery life, right?

The Moto Z, droid edition. Fort you touch It's 5.2 millimeters thick So it's crazy thin Has a giant camera bump Because it is so thin And it also lacks a headphone jack So you have to use the

Does the droid edition have a headphone jack? I don't think the force has a headphone jack Which is thicker, has a bit Bigger battery, faster processor, stuff like that But yeah so that's the story with them They are smartphones with things that snap to the back of them And Lenovo Lenovo legitimately thinks this is

A huge innovation and this is the next wave of smartphones, and I think they are insane. Well, it's better than the LGG5. Yeah. It's a better execution on a similar idea, but it's also much simpler. And it's also, like,

the whole thing that makes modules work is when there's a whole ecosystem of modules being built, and you can get whatever you want in it, and it works. What company is going to buy or build hardware modules for a phone that is definitely not going to sell?

Exactly. And, like, to Verizon customers are not going to buy it. No, fucking headphone jack And it doesn't have a headphone jack Maybe like, no, this is the move You build a module that adds a headphone jack Oh

Think about it Yeah I mean I use Bluetooth headphones You know my favorite part of it is The phone itself charges over USBC But the modules charge over micro USB Which is the bonkers thing So do you like adapters

Do you like phones with cumbersome names This comes with an inbox I will say that they're very different From ARA in that aura is like actual components, like camera modules and like other like hardware type of components that are interchangeable. These are like accessories that snap to the back and it's a much simpler idea. Like peripherals. Peripherals, right.

So like instead of a Bluetooth speaker, you just slap a more powerful speaker on the back of it. Everyone loves that idea. Yeah. My thought here is what if someone went the opposite direction and instead of a headphone jack, they put two USBC plugs? because all of these things are just, they're just peripherals. You could just get like a battery bank and just plug it in over USBC,

but keep another plug free for headphones or other stuff. Yeah, I mean, what if you added the headphone jack that you actually want an, I, so here, look, this happened last year, right? There's a rumor Apple's going to build a smart watch. Everyone rushes out smart watches

for better or worse. That happened. A few years ago, yep. I guess a few years ago. Samsung has since released 14, Smart Watches. For least two more today. You didn't even know that.

The Gear Touch 4G came out today. Whatever. Now there's a rumor Apple's going to cut the headphone jack and do lightning headphones. Everyone's like, we'll make the same mistake as well. But first. It's just, I don't get it. There's nothing about that idea that is friendly to the user. Here's what I'll say.

I have been on a personal mission to kill IR, It is the, it is the animating force of my career. Yeah. Is for us as a species. They came back for one generation of phones and then they went away again. To stop communicating in infrared with technology. That is not how we should do it. We should not send pulses of infrared light to televisions to change the channel.

I can't win. It's so demoralizing. I just feel like there's so many other issues with these phones before you get to the fact that they don't have a headphone. No, no, no. That's really funny. Whatever. It doesn't matter. Laser focus.

Oh, they're fine. The phones are, they got the specs that are, the specs are fine. You're like literally by any Motorola phone. Yeah, well, there's that. He's just going to do it. I mean, they're like every other Android phone in terms of specs that you can buy right now. All I'm saying is, the reason, the reason I can't win the IR Blaster War is because the massive ecosystem of devices in the world that people have that they rely on needs IR to communicate because that's how the economy works. Taking the headphone jack away is a futile attempt.

to bypass the fact that headphones are a pretty good idea that most people like a lot. And the idea that you're going to reinvent how headphones work, how plugging stuff in to make audio go from one place to the other, with proprietary DACs embedded into... It's a 5.2 millimeters thick. No, it's not. Have you seen the fucking magnet case? Use Bluetooth. Yeah, I don't want to drain my battery and plug in another thing.

All this is stupid. The future of headphones is definitely wireless. And like anything else until then is just the stuff. As soon as Intel finally release that bowl. These are not the ones that I would buy. As soon as Intel releases that charging bowl. The charging bowl. Showed four times.

Right? Just drop your stuff into the bowl. That's a great idea. Yeah. But that, I still feel like the future is wireless. Anything else is a stopgap and there is growing and teething pains until we get to full wireless. We're going to have those teething pains for the next 50 years.

Yes, yes. Yeah, we will. Okay. So, Dan, I think you're wrong for a variety of reasons. Paul, I count on you to be also disagree with me. Why are you wrong? Well, I guess I'll just disagree with you on principle. I like it when Apple gets rid of plugs that people used to like, because it just, I don't know, I just feel like a lot of, there's like a lot of hijinks.

It's an opportunity for like everybody to like go back to the sketch pad and come up with like a new weird peripherals. And headphones? Well, so headphones already, you know, like if you want to have, you know, audio and a mic that's already like. there's already like some weirdness. Like, think about the volume button and the clicker and the mic. Like, there's some incompatibilities between plugging into an iPhone, plugging into Android, and plugging into, like, a gaming PC or something like that. You know, a lot of, like, USB, or a lot of gaming headsets come with, like, a USB plug.

I mean, there is already a lot of weirdness in the headphone land. And if we want headphones with more features, with built-in amplifiers, with need power for some reason, maybe have 3D. I don't know, like do newer, better, interesting things with headphones, you need more than that eighth-inch jack. I get what you're saying, right? It's like squeezing the balloon, right? You take away the thing that everybody relies on. They have to invent stuff. All the innovation goes over there.

But all the things that you just described, you could just do with the existing lightning port and then not. give the bird to your users by taking away the thing that they were lying. I mean, yeah, you can say that your argument makes total sense for the iPhone because people actually buy iPhones. People actually buy Android phones. No, no, no.

Android outsells iPhone and more live. People buy Android phones, but you know what? There's a lot of Android phones that still have a headphone jack and come out this year with a headphone jack. Nobody's going to buy these Moto Z phones. Who cares? Except for the people. It's so sad, by the way.

They go to Verizon. They're like, I want a droid. And they like, they go, droid. It's like the one. Their phone is blowing up with notifications. The one dude is like, you remember those robot ads? What's so crazy?

Where the robots murdered people? Do you remember how much we loved the MotoX, both things? Yeah. They just felt like friendly. They felt like... They were personable. You know, I just feel like, you look at these devices, and they're well-made, and they've got nice materials, but it just looks like Lenovo's design department just went

ahead and, like, steamrolled all of, like, more... That's why it's so thin. And that's why it's so thin. So, I mean, like the fronts are funky looking. They're like weirdly unnecessarily thin. The backs. The best part about getting rid of the headphone jack, by the way, is that that will be

yet another level of incompatibility between iPhone and Android users because Android will end up using USBC and iPhone will use a lightning port. Or everyone will go wireless because Bluetooth has no incompatibility issue. You know, like Paul was mentioning, the remote doesn't work on your iOS headphones. We plug into Android. Bluetooth works the same on both of them. Yeah. You know where Bluetooth doesn't work when your battery is dead?

Yeah. When you're stupid headphones, you have to, I'm just, look, there's TV. You still have to go into, like, a menu and do pairing and stuff. Yeah, but once it's done, it's done. This definitely cuts down on sharing. Like, I hang out with people who have Android phones and iPhones. You know, I'm really open in that way.

You're such an accepting person. This is real power play when it's, oh, you need an Android charger. Sorry, I only got lightning. Yeah. Wow, that's where you lead us. You can use my brick if you want. Did you bring your own cable? So explain to me again the connection to the nest.

Oh, so here's the thing. So we never got there. Google keeps buying hardware companies, fucking him up and ruining them over and over and over again. Motorola, maybe not a great hardware company at that time, but they were fine. Google bought them.

We were like, yeah, that was stupid and then flipped it. And now Motorola was done. I don't think Motorola would have lasted as long as they did if Google didn't buy it. Great. Yeah, that's fine. They were dying.

So here's that. Here's the actual question. Google bought Nest. Google bought Nest. But did Google blow Nest up or an alphabet blow this up? Yeah. Or would Nest have imploded itself had Google never involved? I don't think. I don't think Ness would have imploded itself.

So Nest, if you've been watching the news, on Friday, Nest said CEO Tony Fidel is out. There's a new guy, coincidentally. The guy who was the CEO of Motorola home under Google. Yep. Who executed a bunch of layoffs and sold it. That guy, now the CEO of Nest, inside of the alphabet. structure. Literally everyone in the world called me over the past two days and yelled at me about things, which was really interesting. Just sifting through all the conflicting information and like

coming out with what might be the truth was like a fun process. The story I heard is Nest was basically fine as an independent company. They actually had additional funding lined up to grow. Silicon VCs were very excited that it was Tony and a bunch of ex-Apple people. Google wanted to bring in basically Apple's DNA into a hardware group. Tony and his co-founder, Matt, were totally entranced with the idea of using Google's money, Google's resources, Google's reach to accelerate their plan. They got bought by Google. They were whatever, somewhat happy Google. Google restructured itself into alphabet. Nest was pulled out of Google, made it into its own company under a division of alphabet known so lovingly as other bets. So is it fair?

I mean, like the question is how in that time before they were under alphabet, how much were they actually integrated into Google? Open question. Yeah, right? Nobody knows. Well, and also, like, if we're talking about Google failing, like, it's also an open question of, you know, the general consensus is that if you say this, Nest will call you and yell at you about how many new products they released. Yeah, but what actually happened was they bought DropCam and they, like, they revved a couple of products and that was it. Yeah. Any, yeah, so they haven't, their roadmap got all messed up. Who knows?

And now Fidel's out. He might be a huge jerk. That's the reports. Or he might just be the kind of person you need to run a hardware company. We don't know. Again, literally conflicting reports left and right. My point is, let's hope NEST gets back on track.

They say there's gonna be a new product in a few weeks. Hopefully, NEST keeps working. But that bet inside of Google clearly didn't work out the way they wanted it to. But that was their first, Motorola was their first attempt to have their own hardware division, kicked it to the curb. Now they're making dumb phones.

Well, speaking of Motorola executives who make hardware at Google, There's Marwan and Farwaas, and they also brought back Rick Osterlo to run the Google's hardware division, which, by the way, is separate from Nest. Like, Google's got this whole thing where, you know, every other piece of hardware. We run hardware. Like, all hardware comes through here. Google Chrome. Nexus Division.

The Nexus TV, the barnstormer of a product that they have. Trombo pixels is very good, though. Anyhow, Rick Oslo, ex-C-CEO-R-R-A-Modera president, runs that. My point is, the Nest story aside. That's a deep, weird, crazy story. But Google has now bought two different hardware companies and manage them into or around disasters. And now they have their own internal hardware unit.

I don't know what they're doing. I want Google to make hardware. I think it would be good for them to do. But then I look at the Pixel C, and it's like, why did you make this? Who's responsible for that? Yeah. The Nexus TV, the Nexus player.

I'm optimistic that Google's main hardware division, now that it's all collected together and it's run by one person, but like ostensibly one team, you know, they'll be able to figure out and not make those pixel C mistakes. Well, but as far as Nest goes, like, oh. But like the success of that hardware depends not just on the success of like, can you make good hardware.

Not only do they have to make good hardware. They also have to get enough support from the rest of Google to actually sell the damn thing. So Google Home will be fine, right? Chromecast is doing fine. ARA is a huge open question. How much effort are they going to put behind actually making ARA a real thing that people buy en masse?

Are they going to give it to carry your partners? Or is it going to be like a thing you buy in the Google store randomly? Like it's a big question. And sure, they've got plenty of money and plenty of runway to do whatever the hell they want and start small an experiment or whatever. But, you know, it's not like Nest was going to run out of money, right? Yeah, they were fine. Having enough money to like experiment is not the only thing that's going to keep you going.

actually have to like have wins and have like public sentiment like on your side and like build the brand which nest had before they got bought by google yeah yeah i know it's just a very confusing i it sounds like google's going to get more serious about hardware this here but i just look at the motorello thing and i look at the nest thing and i'm like you something something about how you've tried this before and maybe the answer is don't buy a company for a couple billion dollars or don't set up those walls between the companies like they did you know the story that the moro doesn't have walls it has it has like it has the like competing Montessori.

Well, that's what the hardware division is designed to fix. Yeah, that's the point. Like, that's the point, like, collecting the hardware division together, have it run on one team who, one person who, like, aliases with the other parts of Google, and he's up high enough in the ranks. None of that sounds Googly. You can't do that shit

while you're driving a team bike to... Or while your CEO is trying to make a flying car down the road? Well, yeah, we have you talked about that. Oh, my God. I just feel like Google doesn't have a middle ground between hobbies and world changers. And they haven't had a hardware world changer except maybe the Chromecast.

Right. And the thing is most hardware isn't a world change. Lenovo, you know, Lenovo bought a think pad from, or the whole computer division from IBM a long time ago. And Lenovo wasn't like, finally, we're going to take over all PC manufacturing and we're going to change the face of PCs. And they're like, no, we want to have one of the. best or the best business focused laptops. So we're going to buy this brand. And I don't know

specifically what they wanted for Moto, but they're making phones. And that's probably what they, Lenovo wants to do is, well, let's sell some phones. And they, you know, Google has bigger idea. Like, what if, what if we controlled everybody's homes? Maybe Nest is our wedge into controlling everybody's homes. Yeah. I think they bought Nest not to build thermostats. I think they bought Nest to have a great hardware division. Yeah, it was a talent buy, right? It was to get Matt. It was to get Tony.

It was to get their hardware engineers. 60% of Nest employees at the time that Google bought it. 60% were X Apple employees. Right. They were, and I think those cultures were just not compatible. Right. Right. You bring in the top down secret, hard driving, Apple, perfectionist, one product at a time culture. And you a company at Google that's like, here's a bad idea.

Let's ship 40 versions of it and see if it works. Like, and then kill it. See a Google Reader. You know, like, I don't think that those things were compatible at all. And I think if they want to build a harbor business, it's the makes of the great product. They've got to do a lot more work. Paul, any final closing thoughts before we... No, I think that was really well put in you life.

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Risk free. Casper stuff. caspher.com. You know what time it is? Is it time for Science Corner? It's time for her. Lauren to start grushing it. Bring in the grush.

I'm just going to call this segment Science Corner. I like it. Are you into it? I'm into it. There are no corners in space. Are there? Is a black hole a space corner? Look, Lauren is here after what I think was one of the worst introductions in a history

of the Ridgecast. But I want to talk to Lauren about a bunch of stuff. So this is a little meta. but I'm going to say this. Lauren and one of our video directors, Miriam, made a video about the New Horizons Pluto flyby. We have never had a video be as warmly received on YouTube. It was like 7,000 likes, zero dislikes. Yeah, it was a little unnerving because I was like, is this a prank?

Like, are people going to like turn around all of a sudden and just kind of destroy us? But no, everyone was very receptive of it. Because it's a thing. So, because they flew by Pluto. You explained that. It did actually happen, yes. So tell me what happened there. Well, okay, we're basically, we're coming up on the one-year anniversary of the Pluto

Flyby, which happened last July. And that kind of dominated my first month here at the verge. Yeah, so we had the great opportunity to sit down with Alan Stern, who is the project investigator for the New Horizons or the principal investigator for the New Horizons mission. Can I interrupt you? I'm sorry. Why that title? Because it's pretty awesome.

He's like a buddy cop. He's the principal investigator. He's a secondary investigator. He's hard-bitten. Anyway. That's a really good question. One I don't know the answer to. One to ask Stern.

When he comes back, he was very nice. Anyway, so we kind of went through how the New Horizons mission came about. You know, there's kind of like a struggle to actually make it happen. And then he talked about just kind of all the crazy logistics of how it needed to be pulled off because they, you know, when it comes to NASA missions, it's a constant battle between budget. and how much you can actually put on the rocket and, you know, you need it to go a certain speed. So they opted for a larger, like, data storing memory bank, but a less powerful communication system, which is kind of why we're still getting New Horizons data to this day is because they stored all of this stuff right away.

And then it's like, oh, but I can only call you every week to give you like five seconds of that information, you know. So that was neat to hear about. And also just kind of like the crazy cross solar system trek that it had to go through. I mean, it took nine years for it to get there and it had to go through this one small window of space in order for it to work. So it's just, it was neat to hear how all of that worked out and also the emotions behind it. Because, you know, when we talk about space, we don't always think of the people behind space, you know. And there's a lot of work that go into these missions and it was it's really neat to see them get so excited about it and so it was I was asking you know like what did he feel like when that thing

actually flew by and we knew that it happened and he said it was just like so emotional and everybody was so sleep deprived but so excited and it was just a crazy time a crazy summer for them so it was neat to kind of rehash all that you know a year later I got to say this just the the response to the video was like I was like we should talk to learn about it Yeah, yeah. But I want to do some newsy stuff with you, too. So last week, and we talked about us in the Britishcast last week, but it turns out we don't know anything about space.

And you are a space expert. So I want to talk about it. Jeff Bezos was on stage of code. This is basically a very simple question. Jeff Bezos was like, the plan B for Earth should be plan A because Earth is the best planet. Elon Musk was like, I need to colonize Mars because this planet is garbage. Right. But also Elon was kind of like, I never said we needed a plan B.

I think Jeff kind of like misconstrued. what Elon said. I think they do that to each other on purpose. But the point is you had the two big sort of space billionaires who are space as a hobby kind of folks talking with their vision for space exploration, why they're doing it. There are many similarities, many differences. What did you take away from those two? First of all, I took away, well, I'm really glad that you asked your question that you did to Elon because he, the biggest thing. I asked him why he was always late. Why he's always late. And in that same talk, he said something that he's hinted at before. It's that he thinks that he can get people to Mars as early as 2025.

And I just think that is insane. And he also mentioned that. He was like, I never put out a deadline that I think is wrong or something. He was like, it may be delusional, but I always think I can adhere to it. But I'm just wondering if he's got some, like, secret thing up his sleeve. that he hasn't told us yet, because he hasn't told us what it. Oh, it's like, it's like contact or, um, he's going to have been big on one of those huge, like, spinning circle.

Yeah. Or no, or like the Martian. There's like, there's like always the extra secret rocket in Asia, ready to go. Yeah. That's actually, it's Japan. Yeah. Always, it's always Asia. Yeah.

But what I've learned from most science fiction movies is a giant spinning circles have enormous powers. Yeah. They can do almost anything. You build a big enough circle and set it spinning. You can go anywhere in the universe. Anything can happen. But you think, so you think, so you think

That's preposterous. And for a few reasons. And one of my other, my friends who wrote a space reporter who wrote about this, talked Miriam Kramer, she was making the point of like, they haven't even launched people yet. And that comes with a whole other set of risks. And I think if we want to get back into, you know, it's also my getting close to my one-year anniversary of The Verge. And when I first came here, I wrote that really great article about why we should stop

saying space is hard. And one of the things I mentioned in there is... She says really great because literally all of Twitter decided Lauren should die. Yeah. It was like her first day here. I think people saw it as a slight on SpaceX when it really wasn't, but that excuse is not going to fly if you have people on board. Right.

You know, and you have a mistake. And so there's going to be a lot of more scrutiny around what SpaceX does when it starts launching people, which is happening sometime next year. probably late next year. And that's just a whole other ballgame in terms of space travel. I'm not saying they can't do it, but I think they're just going to learn very quickly

that there's a lot more that they're going to have to do in order to transport people, not just first to lower Earth orbit and then even further. And a lot of the things people don't talk about when it comes to traveling to Mars is just the sheer amount of things that still need to be done in order to get there. You know, galactic radiation, huge thing.

And this is why I'm not criticizing too much of Musk is saying just yet because he hasn't unveiled his architecture for colonizing Mars, which he's supposed to do in September. But he did say that he believes Mars should be a direct democracy. I mean, in his mind, he's already there. He's like, I'll build a computer voting system. And then all the people will go home at night and will run the government. I mean, like, I mean, I think the man just smokes an enormous amount of weed. Like, why else do you need a self-driving car? It's to get fucking blazed on the way home.

I, yeah. the Elon must story. I mean, he does do what he says he's going to do. Right. But just later. Just later than he says he's going to do it. And maybe there is something to that strategy of like setting these kind of insane goals for yourself. You don't actually meet them when you say you're going to, but he has done them so far,

at least some of them, most of them. So. But there's the two visions there. So Elon's like, I'm building the rockets. We're already ahead. We're delivering stuff. We're putting satellites into orbit. We're landing the rocket.

Bezos is like, I'm building a roller coaster, right? I mean, that's the blue origin goal is to take you up there. You can look around and I'll come back down. Yeah. Right? There's no other goal there that they've really out. What about the Earth will be zone for light industrial and residential? Oh, right.

But that's like the vision, but the thing he's building takes you up and brings you down. Yeah. But they are working on an orbital launcher right now. But to say that Bezos and I would say Bezos is definitely the frontrunner in terms of, right, suborbital space tourism, which is a whole section of the industry. I mean, that's what Virgin Galactic was doing. But Blue Origin is like greatly pulled ahead in my opinion. However, I don't see him on a level playing field with SpaceX at all because that is like that's another ball game. Is SpaceX just far and away the winner right now?

Like are they just ahead of everyone? Yeah. It's in its own league in terms of the. private spaceflight industry. We've got orbital ATK, who also does orbital launches for NASA, but in terms of like the sheer ambition and the tools to pull that off SpaceX, I would say. Are they ahead of government space programs? That's, I mean, isn't that the real question? Like the, what I heard both Bezos and Must say was the rate of innovationist industry is zero. We've got to pump in private dollars to get to a place where we're actually going to achieve anything.

I think that it's just a different type of, like a different type of way of doing spaceflight. And they're ahead in some ways and they're behind in others. So NASA has a much longer history of launching people. Like they actually know how to launch people. And SpaceX will soon, but NASA's got, you know, a lot of experience under its belt. They know how to do certain things, but they are dictated by politics. And that is constantly changing their direction. or keeping them in a weird stasis.

SpaceX doesn't have to worry about that. They're clearly, Elon can do whatever he wants, you know, as long as he has the money for it. So, yeah, I mean, I think it's just a different type of paradigm, really. Lauren's going to blog the rocket launch live in front of us, but pre-recorded for you in your car. So just put your mind in that zone. We're going to talk about E3 real fast.

E3 Monday. Yeah. Microsoft Sunday, same day. Yeah. What do you think is going to happen? We'll see a bunch of games. That'll be the other thing that happens. Like, where everybody's expecting, like, slightly revved consoles, which is crazy that it's happening so fast.

But, no, because they had to do 4K. Right. You got to get there. Okay. And I'm saying the second that they do PS4 VR. Do you think the one they're going to announce that E3 will be able to handle VR? I'm saying if they announce a PS4 VR, I'm going to leave this office. Yeah.

Or leave WWDC, which is where we'll be. I'm going to leave. I'm going to go home to my apartment. I'm going to pick up my Xbox 1. I'm going to throw it out the window and buy a PS4 VR. Yeah. I'm ready. I'm over the Xbox one.

My Xbox one, I have to like open the cabinet when I launch it now because it gets too hot. Microsoft can, I don't think a new hardware generation for Microsoft is going to change the basic narrative of what's going on with the Xbox, which is that it hasn't done as well as PS4. Right. I just think it's going to change the basic narrative. I think having nicer Xbox one is fine, but to me the PS4 is that, okay, I just think PS4 is like in a better spot. Yeah, for sure. The Xbox one has been in a terrible spot. Wait, wait, wait, wait, since launch.

Lauren, did the Rocket LaHunge get scrubbed? It did, unfortunately. Does that mean we can screw this E3 talk and talk about Game of Thrones for a second? 100%. So Lauren, I think, might be the hardest core Game of Thrones fan at The Verge. I mean, Caitlin Tiffany rivals me pretty well. You just got a thousand-yard predator stare at your face. She's like, I'm going to take her down.

There's not a lot of threats in this show already, so just go with it. Tell me, there's three episodes left. Where's it going? What's happening? Just Timmy Fest. Well, I am just in the dark as everyone else. now because we are in uncharted territory, as Deeter knows. Because, yeah, we're beyond the books, which is great because the books are not great. Man, Lauren hates me so much for saying that.

I have studiously avoided the books because I am scared of bad writing. Yeah, well, there you go. It's not bad writing. It is amazing writing. Okay, Deeter doesn't like that he has to read. Deere is just coughing and hopping right now. Deeter doesn't like that, you know, he goes into authenticity and he talks about all the details of the scene. Sorry he describes what you're looking at. I'm going to go and I'm going to count how many times he describes a roast pheasant in this series.

Okay, I'm just going to... It will still be longer... What I like about it, though, is not the rose, per se. It's the world building that he does. So it's just very complicated and it's one of those things where you can tell he's either planned something very meticulously from the start or that he's...

He knows so much that he can wrap things and kind of connect characters that you just never thought. Is DeNaris Targaryen ever going to make it over there? Because she seems like literally just like wandering around being vaguely racist. I want to know why we bailed on Dorn. Because Dorn fucking sucks. Dorn in the show is the worst. Yeah. I think it is so stupid.

My question is, are the dragons going to meet the Ice Wizard or not? I mean, I think at some point they have to, right? I mean, the only thing that can beat the White Walkers is fire or things made by dragons, so probably should use the dragons to beat the White Wongers. Where are the other two dragons, by the way? They're just like hanging out in the cave. They got free to just sort of like chilling. You said that in like, you're like, duh, but this show steadfastly refuses.

This is a show in which birds routinely carry messages with perfect accuracy in logistics, long distances, and no one has sent a bird to the dragon lady. saying the ice wizard is coming. They're like carrier pigeons. They only know how to get to certain castles. This is one of those moments when it's like you definitely have the world building in your head. And that could be

a Game of Thrones factor, it could not be. And I have no ability to challenge you on it. Okay, no, you know how, I'm pretty sure this is how carrier pigeons work. Noted space expert, Lauren Grush. No, it's like you send them to one spot and then they know how to get to that one spot and then they come back to the,

so they know how to get between points A and B, and that's it. So, like, you have your, your River Run Raven. There was literally a spy with Dineris, who was, like, reporting back, and they never thought to tell that guy, BT-dubs, ice zombies just coming down the hills. That's the whole point. Nobody really believes in the ice zombies

except for the people at the wall. Fine. I'm just saying fine. It's a point in commentary about how politics distract us from the things that really matter. Which, again, is reanimated corpses. Who can only be able to fire. If zombies started to roam the U.S.,

do you think we'd get our shit together and actually, like, stop them? No, we'd argue about it for a while. No, I think both candidates would angrily tweet at the zombies. Until they felt that and quit the race. Delete your account. My Skype dropped, so I missed the start of this conversation. But am I correct to this in a minute? Lauren's a book person.

Yes. And I'm a show person. So I think she's just got real mad at me. Polk holes in a show. But the show has been designed about big reveals, flashy moments, wild. Right. Like the real visual, visceral part of Game of Thrones, which is an important part of the books too. But like Lauren's saying, like the books, you really sit in this world.

And yeah, you do get really detailed descriptions of the meals people eat. But you, it. It coheres a lot better because you're so in this world. And it's completely understandable how one person doesn't know about what's going on somewhere else. It's pretty clear. I think another thing that the show is kind of pissing me off on, too, is like the books are all about how consequences, like the consequences of your actions are like what you do has ripple effects. And they last for like ages, right? And that used to be how the show is.

Like you had the red wedding. You had, you know, Ned Stark. sorry, spoiler, get caught up by now. I don't feel like there are any consequences for what people do anymore. Like this past season, I'm spoiling everything, deal with it. The Dorn women just, like, killed the ruler, and, like, nobody's angry about it, you know? Or Uron killed Baylon, like, then the Iron Islands, and he told everybody about it. And they made him a king.

Like, nobody's really, like, upset when, like, people get offed anymore. It's just like, okay, I mean, this is the world we live in. Like people die, you know? Like, and I think that that's kind of indicative of how the show and the books are diverging. It's like there's no subtlety in the show. It's just like death, like violence and how. So here's my question. They're obviously racing to this season in particular is racing really fast.

What are they going to do for the next two seasons? Because they're not, they're coming to the point where the thing is going to happen. Whatever the thing is. has to happen. That's going to happen next season. You think it's going to... Definitely going to happen next season. And then they're going to have one more season of just like...

What? What thing? What? Dragons versus zombies. Oh, right. I mean, this show comes down to dragons versus zombies, right? I think we're agreed on that. I think so, yeah.

That happens next season, presumably. Right. But then they got one more. I think they see the end game here. It's that, you know, Theon and his sister are taking all the ships to Marine. They're going to go pick up Danny and her dragons. Because apparently they need her to come back here, fight the ice war, and then she wins.

And then there's one more, so she wins. Yeah. And then there's one more season where it's just her being like, oh. And then it's all about her like tax plan. What if I wander around this country aimlessly for a season? Because I did that a couple seasons ago and everyone loved it. Oh, a collection of people? I'm going to burn you to the ground with my dragons and then be your ruler.

I'm sorry, I'm bored and over the show. It's because it's got bad. I will agree with that. The show has gotten bad. And that's the Vergecast. A metaphor for what's happening with our show. Deeter the Dragon versus Paul is up. That's it.

Okay, there's so many other podcasts to listen to. Just an endless amount of them. Control Walt Delete. Control Walt Delete. ProGSP. BrerGSP with Liz and Emily. Chris Plan has What's Tech. Yep.

A tightly focused, well-managed show. So if you didn't like this one, go listen to that one. Recode. Recode. Recode. Recode, Decode. Recode. My favorite of the podcast.

And Deeter's at Backlon, Lauren. Just Lauren Gresh. I should get a cooler name. Yeah, I'm at Reckless. Yeah. Well, what would mine be? Rocket blogging. Rocket blog.

See, you have to look at something. Paul's future, Dan, from earlier, is a DCC. And that is our show. Rocket blog is taken. They have three followers. I'm sorry. That's our show. Please just go on a social media and share it.

And just please, please, God. Please. We're going to try again next week. Goodbye. Rock and roll. Paul. Paul.