The Vergecast - Super Mario Run, Uber's self-driving cars, and Apple's new TV app

Episode Date: December 16, 2016

Everyone was in New York this week, so we had a jam-packed studio with Nilay, Dieter, and Paul, along with culture reporter Megan Farokhmanesh and transportation reporter Andrew Hawkins. Megan joins us on Vergecast for the first time to talk about what dominates the site this week: Nintendo’s new mobile game Super Mario Run, and the new Star Wars film Rogue One (no spoilers). Meanwhile, Andrew enlightens us on what is going on in the world of self-driving cars: Uber’s autonomous cars in San Francisco, and Google’s new car company Waymo. There’s a lot more along with that so hit play and drive. 02:21 - Super Mario Run 14:41 - Rogue One 23:16 - Uber / Google self-driving car news with Andrew Hawkins 45:39 - Lightning round (kinda) starts here 45: 48 - Apple TV app 54:48 - AirPods 58:17 - Paul’s weekly segment “Speaking of Things You Can’t Buy” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, everybody. We're going to start the Vergecast for real in just a second, but I want to tell you something really exciting. The Vergecast is going to be back on video live at CES on Twitter. January 4th, 5th, and 6th. We live for 90 minutes every day from CES, big video production on Twitter. It'll be at the top of the stream, just like NFL games. It's going to be crazy. And we're going to do 90-minute live show with all the latest gadgets from CES, all the executives we can convince to come on the show and get yelled at for not doing good enough gadgets. But we'll convince them anyway. and a bunch of friends from the Verge team like Paul and Ashley and everybody else, Lauren Good, Casey Newton.

It's going to be really fun. Vergecast live video on Twitter, generate 4th, 5th, and 6th. It's going to be super exciting. Stay tuned. Hello and welcome with the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Verveach.com. This episode of The Vergecast is brought to you by a vodka company that I invented. It's called Cizzer Vodka. It lets you cut through the night.

I don't know why I always find it funny. It just keeps going and going. It's not funny at all anymore. I was at Party Last night. I was actually at Josh Spalski's Outline Launch Party last night. It was a good party. And somebody came up and just had a five-minute conversation with me about Cizzer Vodka. And I was like, it's not real.

And they're like, what do you need to make it real? And I was like, well, I need cash in a letter from Francis Ford Coppola, both of which are much harder to acquire than I thought. It's certain quantities of vodka. That's actually the simplest problem. I can go buy vodka right now. Anywhere in America, you can just go acquire vodka. Anyway, Paul Miller's here.

Hi, Paul. Hello. Deider Bone is here in person. Hello, yes. Very fun. And Megan Freakmanesh is joining us. Yes, hey, you said my name right. Yeah, I try to do that for people.

Good, perfect. Because everyone pronounces my name wrong. Also, Paul can't pronounce his own name. That's true. So that's happened this week at coffee. Hall? Like, yes, from hollow notes. Anyway, Megan's here.

If you don't know, Megan recently joined the Virch team, how long has it been? Almost two months. Almost two months. So we haven't driven her away screaming yet. But she joined us from the Polygon team. So you were at Polygon for a long time. Yeah, about four years. Yeah, you're the deputy managing editor of Polygon.

Yeah, I came on as a junior reporter on weekends and clawed my way to the top. Good. So look forward to more corporate intrigue. At the verge team from Megan. At the verge team. But anyway, Megan's on our culture sides. We want to talk about a bunch of culture stuff. It'd be really fun if we started with actually the biggest news of the day, if not the week.

It's been kind of a slow week of news. But Super Mario Run is out for the iPhone. The first time Nintendo's been on a mobile platform. Game, I played it for two minutes. I have to say, Nintendo's UI design, they're so committed to it being garbage. And then you play the game and it's fine. But those opening screens, it's like,

you don't know what you're doing. Yeah, it's hard to get used to, and it's like you're trying to move and it won't let you do anything. Like, mine was kind of like slow and not buggy, but it just, the way I've been describing it to people is like, the experience is like capital F, fine.

Fine, mark. Yeah, well, get into it. It requires always on internet connection. There's a bunch of stuff. Talk about a little bit. Yeah, so basically, the way I've also been describing it, it's kind of like a simplified,

broken-down version of like the old school like Mario games. Like it's a side-scroller, but it's an auto-runner, so Mario just kind of goes and your goal is to make him jump and collect coins. That's kind of it.

There are three different modes, so that's like World Tour mode where you're just trying to collect coins. You can replay levels and do different stuff. There's a competitive mode, but it's more like you're racing against friends times,

and that's it. And then there's like a mode where you're building out a kingdom, and that's the whole experience. When you build out the king, Kingdom. Is that a little house and you get to decorate a little house with stuff? Or is it that you build levels or what's the... So think of like, well, okay, did you ever play old Mario games?

Yeah. Okay. So imagine like, you know the Super Mario World map? I'm drawing you a visual, a beautiful picture. It's a radio show. It's a radio. Yeah. I'm gesturing wildly.

Oh, yeah, the Super Mario map. You can just find a square basically is what... Okay, I'm creating a square with my fingers. So essentially you just place down little pieces. Like, you can like buy like a mushroom house and it's where Luigi lives. and that's how you unlock a Luigi. Yeah. So it's...

Luigi live in a mushroom house. Is that canon? Everybody actually lives at a mushroom house, I think. Except for the princess who lives in an actual castle. Right, right. Yeah. It would be really weird to live in a world in which many of the inhabitants are the same thing as many of the structures. It's really confusing.

So if... Right. Like, there are mushroom people running around. Are Gumba's mushrooms? I don't think we know what they are. Evil mushroom? They're like inbred mushrooms or so... Oh, wow.

I made that up. Please don't. Is Luigi's haunted mansion in the mushroom kingdom or outside of it? Because if all the houses are mushrooms, what's the haunted mansion? Because that's like a proper mansion. Well, I didn't play that game because it was garbage. Whoa. Home run out of the gate from Megan on the perch cast.

Several speed runners would disagree. Is that the one where he had like a backpack that shot water? No, it's a vacuum. It's a vacuum. It's like a low-rent ghostbuster for a short time. Poor Luigi. Like Nintendo's like, what can we? we do with our, what do we do with Luigi? I know, Ghostbusters.

There's one where he shoots water out of it. No, that's Super Mario Sunshine. Which underrated game really good. And you can't play as Luigi. I've not played all the Mario games. Okay. I'm just running out there. I beat Super Mario 3 and ever, I tapped out around Wii U. This is like, there's like, wouldn't have been a couple and I like I played a little bit and I'm like, you know. This is a good question. Would you think of Super Mario run as part of the canonical list of Mario platforms? Or it's like Mario tennis?

some shit he does on the side. Is it Mario tennis? Mario tennis is great. I wish it were Mario tennis. It's a great hobby. But it's a shit he does on the side. It's not like a Mario game. It's a Mario game for a casual audience, right? So it's confusing because like Neil said earlier, it's like you can't play the game without an internet connection, which means you can't play on the subway. You can't play it on an airplane. And so it's like, who is this game for? Like it's for people who are going to sit down on their couch and play a Mario game. And that's weird, right? Because like you already have a handheld device.

But if you're a casual player who maybe doesn't own $150 3DS or whatever, this is for you. This is for you to, like, dip into the franchise. And they're very clearly trying to reach out to an audience they don't already have. Can I play this game whilst watching reality TV? No, because you have to look at it. You don't have to think about it. But I could play it while I was watching like chopped where you don't really need to watch. It's just sort of on.

I think what you're doing, and I know you will, I think you're saying, can this replace three? Yeah, that's all that matters to me. I know what you're doing. Great strength of three. reason why it is one of the, probably the best mobile game ever, is that the game is always paused. Right. Until you take an action. So if there's any interruption, you can look up.

Right. I'm often dead so then I can watch TV. Are there long reload times when you die or is it pretty fast? basically, you die and you become like a little bubble and you float away and to get Mario back, you have to tap on the bubble. Throughout the levels, though, there are these red blocks that are essentially like pause buttons. So whenever Mario hits them, he stops. Really, you're supposed to use them to figure out like, do I want to go to this path or this path or do I want to kill this enemy? The way I've been pausing is by like literally turning off my phone, like clicking the button

to shut the screen down. And then I just like put it down to type something and go back to it. Right. Do the levels have like, there's like 24 levels in the world tour is my understanding? That sounds about right. That sounds right. I haven't actually beaten it yet. Really, the facts of this game are like non-important, right?

They're super replayable. Yeah. They're super replayable. It's like, it's a casual game that's Mario. It's the first time Nintendo's been on this platform. My question is, is it a good game? Like, do you think it's a good game? I don't think I'm far enough in to, to give like a definitive answer.

I think it's meant, you know, it's not a super long game. Like Andrew Webster said he beat, like, World Tour in like, what, two hours? So you're meant to replay it. I can't say there being a ton of replay value, to be honest. It's not, it's honestly not a game that I'm going to spend a lot of time with. The internet connection, so far as I understand, does nothing but says, like, pulls down, like, the ghosts when you're playing that mode and tells Nintendo that you are not a pirate. It's DRA.

That's it. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. But it's DRM for an already DRM'd app store that's already locked down. Who are they worried about? There's a lot of app store piracy. Obviously, it's a terrible idea.

It's not as bad on iOS as it is on Android. On Android, it's like bonkers. Right. I think there's a lot of, for one, I don't think I'm going to beat this game in two hours because I played it for about 45 minutes today, and I was not progressing. Did you read the tips? I read your tips article. That's on you then, not on us.

Birch.com served you well. Well served and just bad. Score another for Megan on our first Virch cast appearance. It's all just happening. But then after you be the level, you still kind of want to go back to it to try to get all five purple coins. And then you might do some of the, I don't know if I'm going to ever be good enough to really want to do a lot of tow rallies. But I'm earning all these tickets to go on the toad rallies. I really liked it because it was like the right amount of challenge.

It had a lot of concepts. I mean, I think in Apple's pushing the hell out of it, it's going to be a success. Yeah. Because it's, for Nintendo's first game, it's Mario. And Apple is just, I mean, you can't, like, you open notes. And Apple's like, we've made a note for you. It's called by Super Mario. I mean, they're just promoting the hell out of it.

I'm sure there'll be media blitz. Miyamoto is like an outdoor world. He's on the Fallon. He's, and he looked amazing on Fallon. Yeah. He's happy in the audience, playing the guitar. It's great. Love that guy.

Yeah, he did an interview with Andrew Webster, which should go read. on the site. Great photos. Anyway, my question is kind of like bigger. Like, this is the year that console market changed in a really substantial way, right? Sony and Microsoft,

instead of doing new consoles, they did like upgraded consoles or kind of taken that PC vibe. Right, the graphics are better, but they're backward compatible. Nintendo's doing the Switch, which is really weird and interesting, and we still don't know

if it runs an operating system. Just random open questions about that in this world. And then there's this game, and it's the first time Nintendo's IP has been on a platform like this. Does Nintendo get it? Are they doing the right things, or are they just sort of like off in the world pretending?

Because their biggest knock on them was, why are you making bad underpowered consoles when all these things exist? Like, you could just be on phones and make real games for phones. And their answer is, but what if we put controllers on what appears to be a medium performing Android tablet and let you walk around with it? And also here's this like free to play game. I mean, I think Nintendo has been doing a let's throw everything at the wall and see what sticks method for a long time. That's the most, I don't know, succinct way that I sum up Nintendo's strategy at any time. It's like, we'll see if this works. Okay, I try this now.

Because, like, nothing, it's always just weird. Like, they don't do anything like the other console makers. The GameCube had tiny disks. Yeah. The Wii had motion controls. GameCuto also had a handle. Yeah, that's important. I kind of like that handle, though.

So, we had motion controls. The 3DS makes you dizzy. And the Wii U had this wireless tablet. Yeah. That turned out, that was a thing that they threw against the wall and it did not stick. That was a bad, bad one. And now they're like, what if we take that concept and put the whole? whole console in it.

Well, did you see this thing that the switch was the most searched for console to see? Like, it was, people are very interested. I don't know if that means sales or success, but people are very intrigued by the switch, I think. Because I don't think people know what it is. That's also, it's confusing. It is very confusing. There's a patent for sticking the tablet part of the switch into a VR headset.

Because it's a 6.2 inch screen, but it's 720P. Like, don't do that. And then Chris Granite wrote a great thing It's like the NES classic edition They can't ship enough of them And that is not high technology Right

That's like they basically built an emulator The way the pirates built an emulator And blessed it with some rocks They're selling a raspberry pie Yeah And it's like I can get a raspberry pie right now How many raspberry pies do you need? I can do you need 10 million of them

Like they're available to you And they're like holding So you think they're just sort of like Unintentionally blowing it all the time I wouldn't say that. I guess I'm just interested to see what the staying power of this is because like they did an app earlier. Was it last year I guess? They did the Mitomo app, right? And that everybody was super interested. My Twitter is blowing up with people talking about that. And then a month later, nobody was talking about it. Nobody uses it anymore. Nobody plays it. They're still updating it.

But it's like you look at something like Pokemon Go or like that's still pretty popular. It's not as crazy as it was, but like, Nintendo needs to figure out a way to like capture what Pokemon Go did. I just don't know if they have it with this Mario app because I just can't imagine this. being fun past like a month unless they continue to update it. Yeah, with your always on internet connection. Exactly. It asked me if they could send me notifications, which is just the rudest thing any app can do. I did that so hard. I actually hurt my finger.

Third point for makeup. If they come out with another, yeah, because there's four levels per world or whatever, and then there's six worlds. I don't know if those are the right words, but there's that many things. They did another pack of six and tried to charge $10 again with people. That seems to look really greedy. It seems like a lot for, like, what the game offers. Like, $10 for a one-time fee and no in-app purchases, like, okay, I can deal with that. But to continue to add at that price seems like a lot.

It's just going to be everywhere. We're going to hear so much what's... You can just tell when something is going to be around. Yeah. But it's also funny because Nintendo put out a thing that you can't reasonably give as a gift. You can't... People try it. Like, are you going to hand somebody an Apple Store gift card with Mario on it?

Yeah, just go to 711. And then get a Sharpbeat. Buy an iTunes. No Apple is putting out the Apple Store gift cards with the market. Like those are going to be... Yeah, yeah, yeah. I bet you can... I bet you a dollar.

I bet you $9.99. You can buy Super Mario Run in Starbucks. This... Well, you can buy a card. Yeah. And you have to give someone a card. And you have to say... Absolutely.

Use this QR code. That's too much. Like, you just like steal somebody's phone while they're sleeping. You use, like, their thumbprint. You are a weird gift giver. I think that's actually really sweet. Like, hey, while you were asleep. I got you this game.

Used your thumb while you were sleeping. I don't want to talk about it. Oh, my God. Gosh. Whoa. There's your first flaw in touch ID. You can use other people's thumb while they're sleeping. I knocked you out and used your thumb.

But it was for a good reason because I love you. Yeah. What if Apple comes out with the next version of touch ID that like makes sure that the thumb isn't like dead? Well, that's already a thing. We've done whole videos. Russell Branden did a whole video where you can hack touch ID with a fake thumb. Yeah. But I'm saying what if Apple upsets game starts fighting this fight.

It's still not going to beat the sleep. Weirdest part of the iPhone. presentation ever. So touch ID is great. But if someone walks up to you, cuts off your hand, they've got everything. That's terrible. Speaking of dead people, let's move on. Whoa.

It's going to work. Okay. I think. Yep. Probably not. Nope. Rogue one. By the time people listen to this, Rogue one will be out. That's a big deal. Was there a spoiler in that transition? Well, a lot of people die in Rogue One. Okay. This is the part of the segment where I crawl under the table and just like start plugging my ears.

Spoiler free. No one's seen it. I haven't seen it. Okay. Yeah. So you know some things. You know some things. You know some things. You said to yourself.

Well, I've read our spoiler-free review. Yeah. Which is basically Brian Bishop writing it like a rumination on death. It was crazy. His review was like, I'm not going to tell you anything about it. And then he held to that. I still felt like I read something about Star Wars. That's what you want.

I mean, you're on our culture team. There's a lot of Rogue One stuff happening on the culture side of this house. What are your big thoughts before you've seen it? Is it is, are they going to be able to turn Star Wars into this? expanded. Do you want the Marvel universe? But for Star Wars? Is that what you want?

Okay, I have a confession to make. Yeah, Star Wars. I don't hate Star Wars. I don't hate Star Wars. Original 3 or the, just the one? I mean, the original 3. They're really solid. You know, obviously we don't talk about the prequels.

I think the new one is good. I liked it for what it was. But I'm not, like, jumping out of my skin to go see the new one. I'll see it at some point. Probably should have mentioned this before you hired me. No, I don't have the Star Wars love that other people have. I also don't have the Star Trek love that other people have on the verge team, and that shit will get me fired.

Like, they will find a way to fire me, which is terrible. See, I don't really do Star Trek either. I'm weirdly into all the Marvel superhero movies, but like not so much. So you're the one. I am the one person. The rest of the culture squad is like, Marvel, we got to stop it. No, I'm just like, give me more. I was really afraid that you're going to say Stargate and then.

Hold up. Okay. The original Stargate movie is actually very good. Yes, it's so good. Yes. James Seder, man. Yeah, and then, you know, they had that weird TV show that was okay. and then it kept up.

Yeah, yeah. And then we just don't talk about it anymore. Things you don't talk about. Prequels, anything after the first Star Game movie. Keeping a giant list just for future use for everybody. I know, what do you think? I mean, you're going to go see it. Yeah, I haven't pre-order tickets, so I'll be able to see it in like April, probably.

By the time it's available. No, I don't have a hankering for a Rogue one or a Marvel-style super universe of Star Wars stuff. But, like, it's okay to, like, have a Star Wars movie every now and then. And some of them are going to be kind of okay, but there's enough there. Because what they did is they took the whole extended Star Wars universe that had been built up and they threw it out. None of that's canon anymore. But they've got like 30 years of lots of people, right, and lots of crazy Star Wars stories. To pull from.

And they could just pull from that whenever they want without any regard. Which is 100% what Marvel does with the comic books. Right. But Marvel is like, you know, putting it together in like a really tightly interconnected way. What I'm hoping never happens is like the sort of ultra insane like you need to keep track of like 500 different characters to like follow the movie. Right. Like I hope that never happens. Where there's just random scenes in Avengers movie where Thor's like I'm going to hold this ice cube for five seconds, but you don't know why.

Yeah. Right. Like that they can't do that. And they also, I also hope that they will have different visual aesthetics for the movies. Because like except for Guardians of the Galaxy, every single Marvel movie, basically. basically looks and feels the same. Did you see the every frame of painting YouTube video about the Marvel soundtrack and how, like, you can't name a Marvel song? Yes.

Because they're all like, me. Yeah. That's a little bit what I'm afraid of is like by grinding them out, they're going to create basically an engine to just jam out Star Wars movies every year. And when you do that, that gets ground into a fine paste. And like there's not like a uniqueness to any of the movies. It's like the Harry Potter movies. There's only one great Harry Potter movie. The third one.

The third one. crew. Yeah. Ooh. Yeah. It's absolutely great Harry Potter. The rest of them are fine. Who is the director?

Alfonso O'Coron. That's what I'm thinking about that. He had this crazy visual style to it. Yeah. Yeah. And like that's what Star Wars needs is they need to like bring in new directors. They need to bring in women directors. They need to like just keep on doing.

It needs to be a platform for people to try new visual styles and like make new kinds of visual effects. I've heard that the visual effects in this movie are like incredibly smart and interesting. There you go. Good. So here's the real question. So you got the three that are canon that Lucas has already screwed with once. How long until they remake those? Right?

Because you can't keep going and going and going and going and still have these three movies at the core of your universe that were made in the 70s. Okay. I think respectfully all those actors need to die first. Wow. I just, how can you... Wait, wait, wait. I think you said respectfully, but I heard like what I'm about to say is disrespectful. Which is how most people use the word respectfully.

You mean out of respect for those actors. I mean, how can you Recast? Maybe she didn't mean that. How can you like redo that story if you have like Mark Hamill is still alive and is also still in the new That's weird, right?

Like I know they're doing like prequels And we're going to get like a young Han Solo And a young Lano Cal Reson But it's not the same as like completely rebooting that franchise. Yeah. But it's going to happen. It's going to happen. It's going to happen.

But it'll happen after like they've run its course. They've grown it to a fine powder. And it's like they've stopped making them for five years. And then they're like, well, we've got to start it. it again. We don't have other ideas. No. See? It's just... No, I believe that you fall firmly in one of these two camps.

Here's the thing. I think you can do that when they're based on books. Because I think you have a book, like, I think we can have another Lord of the Rings telling. I'm fine with that. I want a BBC series that goes one episode per chapter through the Harry Potter books. Yeah. By the way, you just gave Netflix like a

complete, wonderful idea. Oh, I literally spoke to Sony about this when Sony have the rights. You like sent him an email? It was out of conference. I talked to. I'm very serious about this. But Star Wars, those are the movies are the movies.

Yeah. How do you reboot a movie? We're going to be here in 10 years. We're talking about the reboot of Star Wars episode four. Because everybody loved the reboot of Psycho. Here's what I'll say. These spreads are connected in my mind. We're talking about two core pieces of storytelling that are both decades old.

Yep. Is there ever going to be new stuff again? Or are we just sort of like, it's too hard to find things. We're too saturated with too much Netflix and two apps. Everything is a remix, Neelai. What's going to happen is that Mario is going to land on Tatooine. Oh, my God. He's going to go jump in over the Sarlac Pit.

That is some like real 80s crossover stuff. I would play that, yeah. I mean, that's like a special edition of Super Mario. I mean, they did make Angry Bird Star Wars. There's hope then. A new film. I want to kill myself. All right, I'm going to read an ad.

Then we're going to have Andy come in. And then we're going to talk about self-driving cars. Yes. Got a great idea. A movie with paid unlock special skins for the characters. So you can watch the movie the regular way, but then if you want like the special... Like you want the machinima Mario retelling of Star Wars. You push the button.

Movie, but it uses the Connect or the PlayStation camera to map your face and then put your face into the movie and you are one of the characters. That's really special. It's perfect. The NBA-C-K game, right? Future story. I got a children's book once that had my picture in it because... And I had my name. Did you treasure it?

Yeah. Do you still have it? See? No. There's so much money. This episode of The Vergecast brought to you by Masterclass. Aaron Sorkin is teaching a master class on screenwriting. Aaron Sorkin's masterclass contains 35 lessons over six hours of video and interactive assignments.

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your ideas with classmates. Classes are on demand, so you take them whenever you want at your own pace, and you can rewatch as many times as you like on any device for life. So, for an exclusive clip of Aaron discussing how he writes dialogue, go to Masterclass.com slash the verge. That's masterclass.com slash the verge. Okay, so we're back. Now it's like a lot of people in the room on the verge cast. Yeah, this is nuts. I like having Dieter here in person.

That's good. Paul is still here. Megan's still here. Megan. You didn't say that it was good that we're here. Yeah, we're just here. But I see you guys in New York all the time. Just take us for granted.

I take you for granted. That's a real thing. But another person I take for granted because he's in New York. That's terrible. That's awful. Worst introduction ever. Andy Hawkins is here. Senior Transportation Reporter.

A ton of self-driving news over the past week. or two. So much. Uber put out a self-driving car and immediately started running red lights. Yeah. The state of California told them shut. I mean, just sober. Just go through all the headlines and let's get into what's going on self-driving. So what happened was, I'm mixing, I'll probably mix up my days here a little bit, but I think it

was on Tuesday, Google announced that it was spinning off its self-driving car unit out of the X Moonshot division into its own company called Waymo. Let's just stop right there. It's a really bad name. Waymo? Waymo. That's a punishment. It's like Astro Teller.

Waymo problems. Right? And that was Andy on the verge cast, everybody. He's cladding right at the door. No, it's designed for that. It's like, uh. I mean, that's Astro Teller, like, punishing his children for, like, leaving home. Yeah.

It's like, we're going to let you graduate, but you have to change your name to Waymo. Right? It's awful. But it's not like Google was the most, like, gravitas. Waymo is like a made-for-TV, like kids toy, right? It's like, Waymo, it bounces on the ground. stick your hand in it. Throw it at your sister.

Worst toy. It's a bouncing glove. It's the Waymo. Anyway, so Waymo spins out. So they're under the alphabet umbrella. They're under the alphabet umbrella, but they're their own separate company. They're still within Alphabet. They're still within Alphabet.

So now Alphabet owns Google, Nest, Waymo, and other bets. Right? It's called X. X. And there's... No, other, but... There's also whatever fiber is called now. Oh, yeah.

And I want to say that there's a life company, but they like, when they announce, oh, yeah, there's like the life sciences company. We're like, what's it called? Oh, you know, the life sciences company. Okay. It starts with the C. Calico. Calico.

I don't know if that's the name of the company, though. That's one of their projects. Anyway. It's a better name. So Waymo is out in the world. Waymo's out in the world. And a big change with Waymo. Big change is that it seems like as if, and they didn't say, they didn't come right out

and say this, but based on some of the reporting that's been done, it's, it's, it's, It's been suggested that they're not going to be focused on making their own cars anymore. So that means no, we're not going to see hundreds or thousands of these tiny little bubble-shaped Google prototype cars out on the roads. They're going to shift the focus more into software, self-driving software that can be plugged into third-party vehicles, essentially, and make them drive themselves. And this, by the way, Google is doing this for real, but the big rumors are on Apple are that Apple's ambition to build a car also hit a wall of some kind, and they're also going to make software for other people's cars. Yeah, correct. So the tech company is trying to make vehicles seems to have hit a fairly serious roadblock. Yeah, and Tamara Warren wrote a really smart piece about this.

That was essentially the message was that your self-driving car is not going to be built by Google or Apple. It may be powered by Google or Apple, but it won't be built by them because that's still a very complex money-sucking kind of process that really the car companies have become experts in over decades of experience. Right. And the tech companies still just really don't seem to have a grasp on. And even a company like Tesla, which is doing well compared to nothing. If we're looking at a range between nothing and shipping some cars, they're doing great. They are. But at scale, they're having a lot of problems.

A lot of shipping delays, production problems. A lot of questions surrounding the Model 3 and whether it's going to be able to come out in time. What's so interesting to me about both Google and Apple, like, I mean, we could say that they've failed even though they never actually like officially were out there. Well, Google showed off a car. Yeah, but they never, they always said it was a prototype. They never implied that that car was going to do the thing that they were going to ship. I mean, they took people.

They took all kinds of people for rides in their car. What's fascinating is we've seen these two companies try and fail out a thing before, which we could maybe talk about later. It was called television and they got stymied by institutional powers in the industry. In this case, they've tried and failed just because like making a car turns out to be really freaking hard, I guess. It's really, it's funny that they both, like, there's these two things that Silicon Valley can't just, like, snap its fingers and do. And it's cars and TV. Like, the two most American things are. And the future of them is, like, a rolling living room that shows you TV. Right. Why is it not in it? Why is it hard to make a car?

There's, you know, there's sort of all the things that go into it. There's the supply chain. There's just the manufacturing capabilities. You know, there's the relationship with dealers. There's just sort of this pyramid that exists. already when it comes to making a car that these companies just don't have any experience in or maybe they just lack the motivation to get into. They saw it for what it was and maybe dabbled in it a little bit and then decided this is not something that we want to invest our time and effort into. And so we're going to focus on software instead because that's maybe something that's going to be more profitable for them. So there's a reason that the auto industry also needed to be bailed out a few years ago. It's sort of an industry that, you know, it's sort of an industry that fluctuates with the economy, and it's not as much of a guarantee in terms of profits.

Yeah, you also can't break a car with a software update and then make everybody buy a new car, which I like to call the iPhone story. Just a fact of my iPhone right now. They're going to make me get an iPhone 7. That said, the car industry is definitely leaning really heavily on the tech industry. It seems like moving forward. I mean, everything that we talk about these days, whether it's self-driving cars or in-car entertainment or connected cars, having cars that send signals out to other cars or to infrastructure.

I mean, this is something that the car companies are really going to rely a lot on the tech industry for, and they're gobbling up all these little tiny startups, too. I mean, GM is buying companies. Ford is buying all these little tiny self-driving car companies. It seems like there's a lot of pieces being moved around the chess board, and I think we're going to get a clear picture of that, especially going into the new year with, like, CES and the Detroit. Troyado show. It should be interesting.

So, wait, let's keep going down the headlines. So that's the Google news. That's the Google news. And then part of me wonders whether they caught wind of what Uber was going to do, and that's why they did this. But who knows how all these companies sort of play off of each other. But the next day, Uber announced that they were unveiling their self-driving, their second phase of their self-driving car, limited self-driving car service in San Francisco, where they were originated seven years ago. This is an expansion of the project that they started in Pittsburgh back in September. I got to go out there last week,

take a ride in one of the cars, and see sort of like, it's also different from Pittsburgh because they have these really nice luxury Volvo SUVs that are pretty swank. They've got like the thing, the crap on the top of the roof, but it's like, it's more compact.

More compact, it's a bit more integrated into the car. There's like a camera in like the grill. Yeah, and it's because Uber has this partnership with Volvo, so these cars were made specifically for this purpose. Whereas with the few, they had Ford Fusions and, in Pittsburgh and those were just cars they bought off the lot and then slapped all their

self-driving stuff onto it. Yeah. So my favorite thing about their XC90s, right? Yeah. Volvo's headlight design for the XC90. And I believe all their cars. Code named Hammer of Thor. What?

I didn't know that. Yeah, the headlight. Is it literally called Hammer of Thor or is it called Yal-R or whatever the... No, it's Hammer of Thor. Like Cadillax Design language is called like art and science. Yal-M-M-M-M-Ler? This is terrible radio. Keep going.

Anyway. So, just as it. And as soon as they did that, you know, there was obviously all the headlines blaring. Oh, Uber self-driving cars in San Francisco, woo-hoo. And then a few hours later, video surfaces showing one of them blowing through a red light. Not narrowly missing. Video shot by a lift driver, if I'm not mistaken. No, no.

It was like a cab company. Okay, a cab company. Because there was a second video that was a lift driver. So, yeah, not a totally, like, unaffiliated source of information or an unbiased source for this dash cam footage. But still, the image was still unmistakably. a self-driving Uber-V Volvo SUV. Just like banging through it. Banging through the red light.

And like not narrowly missing, but coming pretty close to a pedestrian in the crosswalk. So that came out. And then some other, there are some other tweets about, you know, some erratic behavior from some of these cars. Uber said they were looking into it. And then pretty quickly came around and said, oh, there was a human driver in one of these cars. Of course. And so we've already seen somebody. And that person was, I think, dismissed or put on leave.

And so we're already seeing people losing their jobs. I'm going to say if Uber drivers can get dismissed for not obeying traffic signals, there should be no Uber drivers left in the world. Yeah, exactly. But that's the point, right? And that's the ironic thing about all of this is that the whole reason that we're supposed to be getting self-driving cars is to prevent all of the deaths and accidents that happen on the roads today. I mean, that's, you know, what Travis Kalanick, the CEO of Uber said in his little gauzy interview

that he did on Good Morning America this. week and it's what the Google you know Google says that with why they're working on self-driving cars we're supposed to you know there's these thousands of deaths that happened and we're dying at exponential rates because people are such crappy drivers yeah so let's replace them with robots and we'll all live much longer and happier lives so that's what Tesla says too that's what Tesla is very very big on this concept as well so anyway then as a cherry on top of all of it uh California DMV came out and said, oh, Uber, hello. Remember us?

You forgot to get your automated driving permit from the California. Because California, unlike a lot of states, has a very, like, well-articulated set of guidelines. Because they're all there. Because they're all there. And all the companies have gotten this permit that they're supposed to get from the DMV, which costs like $140 bucks. It's like... They just didn't pay for their tags.

They didn't want to pay for their tags, I guess. So they were like, please stop doing self-driving cars. And Uber said nothing. They're just radio silence, and I'm still waiting to hear back from them in terms of how this is going to work out. Oh, sorry, here's here's 140 bucks, but just like, no, I don't believe in regulation. That's not Uber style. Yeah, right. Like their whole thing is like, fuck the government.

Yeah. Middle fingers, tall the haters. Like, we don't need that. I mean, it's just where they, they call them company Uber for Godson. It's because Milnear was taken. The hammer of Thor. So we're still waiting to see how that plays out. They're supposed to be, I guess, the company and the DMV are going to have a summit today and sit down and talk about their feelings.

The DMV rolls up in like a real car. And Travis rolls up, like, out the sunroof is the car drives itself to the meeting. It just stands up there. Arms wide. Uber. To blow through all the red lights on purpose. It just hits the DMV's car. Oh, whoops.

Sorry. So we'll see how that turns out. And then the next, and then GM just. sort of, you know, to close out. They were sad that they weren't in the news. GM was sad that they were left out of the news. And so they announced today that they're going to immediately begin testing. There are self-driving Chevy bolt electric cars in Michigan immediately, they said. And so that's happening. So that's the week of self-driving car news. So add that all up. So I think the bolt looks silly. Jordan Goulson, also on our transport team, thinks the bolt is like the most

important car that GM is going to release at all. Because it's their mass market EV. It's going to beat Tesla to the punch with the Model 3. It's an important car. So that's interesting that GM's pushing forward with self-driving and that car in particular. I don't think of GM as being the most high-tech company compared to all of its competitors. But add up all this news, are we closer to self-driving or is this just the machinations of fools? I don't think so. I think it's really, it's Uber is the only one that's saying, hey, come get in our self-driving cars. We want to show it to you. All the other companies are saying, no, we're going to test and we're going to iterate and we're going to. Except for Tesla. I mean, they're shipping autopilot. Yeah, but they're

not turning it on for a while, it seems like. I mean, well, autopilot isn't self-driving. I guess if you want to get into like nitpicky stuff. Yeah, exactly. It's supposed to be a driver assist system as opposed to it, like a full self-driving. Now the future Teslas will have full self-driving included in them, but they won't be, Musk was unclear as to when he's like going to flip the master switch and turn them all on. So all the cars start following his command. California had a thing They also wanted to redefine. One of the things I saw with the California regulation was consumers are confused because everyone is using different language to mean different things.

And one of the ways Uber is getting around their $140 requirement is by saying our cars don't meet this definition. Yeah, it's true. And it's just legal. Is it like a detector that like the car won't drive itself unless there's like a butt in the driver's seat? So that's what Tesla does, right? But the car won't drive itself unless it senses you repeatedly. So the way it does that is you have to touch the steering wheel. And it beeps at you.

And if you don't touch it, you'll fall asleep. It'll just pull over and stop. Which is different from the Google car, which part of their announcement that they were spinning off Waymo was that they were also, they announced that this is kind of a weird thing. But that in 2015, they had one of their cars with no steering wheel and no pedals driving around on public roads in Austin. and the only passenger was a man named John, or I'm sorry, Steve, who was blind. So that was part of their announcement that they were spinning out their company, but then they wanted to add this sort of human element aspect to their announcement by saying that we did this, and this is how it could affect people's lives who have disabilities.

And so that was kind of interesting, also kind of interesting that had happened almost two years ago, and nobody seemed to notice or care or how they kept that under wraps. You know, nobody saw like a car driving around with no street and wheel in it and didn't seem to think to tell anybody about it. But yeah, that's the distinction here, is that, you know, what's self-driving, how it's going to sort of fit into, like, our lives and our society? Is it going to be a taxi service like Uber? Is it going to be personal cars that are purchased by people off of dealerships?

You know, what is going to be this technology and how are we going to use it? And I think a lot of people are still really unsure about that. That's why they're maybe acting more cautiously, but Uber is Uber. And so they need to be the ones that are out there first shoving into people's faces. I mean, because there are, if every, if the model is all the car companies own a fleet of self-driving cars and you push a button and a bolt shows up and then drives you wherever it goes, like Uber is disrupted. Yeah. So they need to beat everybody to that. But they don't have Uber's network.

That's Uber's advantage here is that they have this network already that they've spent seven years building of drivers who will not have jobs soon enough. But mostly of people who use the service and how much it's become part of like our culture and how much it's become sort of a verb. I'm going to Uber over there. That's the achievement that they've had, that they've been able to show off. And how, in the foundation that they'll build this on top of, the car companies don't have that. They're about having a car or two cars in your garage, the American Dream. But if that goes away, how do they build up this network? How do they sort of adopt whatever it is that Uber has?

Well, this is Ford's whole shtick right now is Ford's like, we're not a car company. We're a mobility company. Yeah. Like, we're going to get you around. That word's so much. Yeah. And so they like, they like, they like, don't they like, didn't they do like a bike share program in one city randomly?

They did. Kansas City. Yeah. So they are at least talking the talk of seeing past a world of car ownership. Right. But everybody's been saying 2020, right? And so at some point, if that's true or even remotely true, at some point between now and then, there had to have been a moment when like people like, yeah, fuck it, put the cars in

the road. And it felt like Uber just wanted to do it first. Yeah. And they also had this reputation of doing what they want, when they want, and not really caring so much about the rules or the repercussions, which could be a problem. If you could pull up an app by now and push a button, a car would come to your door and you'd get in the car on that car with no driver would take you somewhere, would you do it? Is there, in which company would you want, whose car would you want to show up in front

of you to feel like, oh, this will work? I've done it with it. I've been in a few self-driving cars. I haven't been in one without a driver in it. So it's hard to answer. Because I guess all the companies have, like, you know, occurrences of accidents happening, fender benders. There was the one Tesla, the guy was not paying attention and got decapitated, which you don't want to have happened to you. So, yeah, I think it's more or less about, like, which technology you'd be most comfortable with or which car you feel like would be the safest and more about how other people on the road are going to act, because that's sort of the problem.

The car is programmed to drive like a little old lady, really. It's like it only, it can only go so fast. It, you know, obeys the speed limits to, you know, obeys the traffic signs and all the laws to a fault. It's supposed to be like this super cautious type of experience, whereas it's everybody else that's a maniac and full of rage. Yes. Every time they get behind the wheel.

That's why I drive. I'm never getting a self-driving car. It's either that or smoking. I can't tell which one's more deadly. Well, where is people? supposed to listen to the Vergecast, if not in their cars, right? They're doing it right now. Absolutely.

But as soon as you have self-driving cars, I will make this a 360 video experience. Oh, not to be interacting. The entire interior of your car. Right. Wow. Think about it. And then those stupid little dials on all the dashboards that like every car car, it's like everyone who has the dial on the dashboard that controls their shit says

it's the best thing ever, I never can understand how to use them. Like PMW is like the dial that like does stuff. Oh, yeah, you have to train your brain. Yeah. The command is Mercedes. It's I drive for BMW. Yeah, I never understand how to use it. But, like, when we do the 360 video, you'll be able to lean back and control the verge

cast. Put one hand into that dial. And you can just decide who you want to look at. And then I can end every segment by saying, don't touch that dial. Yes. Bring it all back. Well, what you just said, though, is part of the problem. We need to retrain our brain.

We need to, like, all go back to, like, driver's ed, essentially. Right. And relearn how to use these new cars with their new technology and their new user interfaces. And what's terrifying to me is the idea that half of the car companies will pick Apple as their self-driving platform vendor and half of them will pick Google. And then we'll have a fraction. Those cars will hate each other. Right. It'll be Death Race 2000.

Didn't the Department of Transportation just announced like this new thing where they want like a wireless standard where cars will talk to each other? Yeah. It's part of, so the DOT under Obama has been pretty like forward thinking about this stuff. They came out with automated vehicle guidelines. a few months ago saying, we want there to be a standard for the entire country, so that's not just piecemeal state by state, so that if you're testing your cars in California, you can also go to Nevada, you can also go to Texas. And then also, yeah, they came out with a new rule saying all cars in the future should have

this technology so that they can communicate with one another so that we have safer cars and sort of a more uniform system. So, yeah, they're definitely sort of trying to lay the groundwork from a rulemaking point of you, but it's really up to the carmakers. Yeah. So we're not closer. It's just a bunch of stuff has happened. I mean, like, I'm optimistic just because, but, you know, again, I'm steeped in it,

so it's hard to tell. But I feel like I talk to normal, normal people, normies, as I call them, my parents and you're friends. But really? Yeah, Mr. and Mrs. Normie. This is Mr. and this is Normy. People who aren't like, don't, like, you know, day-to-day verge readers, which I don't even know why I'm friends with these people.

But when I talk to them and I'm like, oh, yeah, I cover self-driving cars. Like, oh, I could never, I could never get in one of those. How could you, or like when I go in like MSNBC and talk about that the anchors are always aghast myself driving, they can't believe it. So there still is like, I think, a huge hill to climb. Yeah. And they're doing it in San Francisco. Of course. Hey. Sorry.

I can't wait. I can't wait. All I want in this world is my parents have a self-driving car. I think about it all the time because my mom talks on the phone and I tell her you can't use the phone on driving, but she doesn't want to figure out her Bluetooth. So she puts her phone on speaker and holds it over here. Screams at the phone. Bluetooth. The cause of every problem I have in the world.

One of my favorite pieces was written by Ben Popper, which is like, I don't want my kids to get a driver's license story that he wrote a few months ago, which I think is like that kind of sort of puts it in perspective. Yeah. Well, we had the current Secretary of Translation Anthony Fox. He said the same thing. He said the same thing.

He read Ben's piece, and he was like, that's a great idea. I'm going to steal that. His kids are so mad. Anyway, wait, I'm going to read an ad, then we got a little bit of a lightning round. You should stick around, Andy. Sure. Have you heard of Sock Club? Yeah.

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Give Sock club this holiday season. Sockclub.com slash verge. All right. It's a little bit of a lightning round because we're going over. But Deeter and I got ourselves all worked up with the Apple TV app. iOS 10.2 is out. Apple TV update with the TV app is out. It's kind of a mess, Dieter. Yeah. The headline that I think ended up on our site for it was the thing I tweeted, which is this is clearly, obviously, plan C, maybe D or E for Apple in TV, and you can tell. Yeah. So the main thing is it doesn't have Netflix. So it's supposed to recommend things. We've talked about this on the show.

The TV app is obviously supposed to be the home screen of the Apple TV, but it doesn't have all the things it needs. It doesn't have a TV service. behind it. So it's an app. You're supposed to open the app and it's supposed to show you things to watch. But it cannot show you Netflix things to watch because Netflix doesn't want to share its data. It also, Apple TV historically doesn't have Amazon on it because Amazon doesn't want to pay the fee to Apple. So it can't show you Amazon shows to watch Amazon. And also I can't show you most cable networks. Right. And it doesn't have single sign on if you have basically any of the cable networks. If you have DirecTV or Dish or Sling, I think it has some single signs. Yeah. But nobody has those things. I don't know if it. Something there is wrong,

but just email nelai at the verge.com to correct it. So far you've listed three strikes. Yeah. It's just like it's kind of broken. And I don't know what Apple's big solution here is. Lauren Good wrote a review of the best streaming sticks. I recommended the fire TV stick. Yeah.

Because it's better than everything else. Let me lightning on you. It's also super cheap. Yeah. You live in a world where you can have an Apple TV with a working single sign-on and a good Apple TV app. But in order to live in that world, you have to have an I, hour blaster on your coffee table. What do you do?

This is a theoretical. Yeah. What does the iron blaster control? Nothing. It's just there emitting infrared. You have to send a message through the IRBlaster for some purpose twice a session. That's what allows a single sign on to work is because a single sign on is dependent on the remote control code built into the Comcast remote. Oh my God. That's the rule that means you have to have it at an IR blaster.

It's all nonsense. Do you do it? No. Okay. I mean, I don't know. So here, this is actually my lightning around question. Okay. Dieter has laid out the problems.

It's clearly a plan C. How do you watch TV right now, Megan? I actually don't watch TV. I watch Netflix. That's it. That's a fact. That's it. That's it.

Netflix has offline now on the mobile. I don't know when they added that. This has changed my life. A couple weeks ago. By the way, Google Home added Netflix support today, I think. So you can just say, show me Luke Cage on Netflix and I'll light up your Chromecast and start showing it to you, which is kind of the dream. Also,

Terrace House? Does everybody watch Terrace House? Are you saying Terrace House or terrorist? No, I got confused about this too. It's Terrace, not Terra's. If you look for a terrace house,

you're going to find out. The architectural feature of houses. So it's a show about houses with terraces? Like, Terrace is the adjective, yes. No, no, no. It's a reality show. It's Japanese.

Okay. A lot of times when you say questions to me, I think I should be saying yes. I want to say, hi. And bow a little bit. I've been watching a lot of this show. It's great. It's changed everything.

Okay, Google. Show me Terrace House on Netflix. And the three people who have managed to set all of that up are now watching Terrace House on Netflix. Because it's a lot. You got to get a Chromecast. Anyway, how do you watch TV? Your situation is like a disaster. Apple TV, PlayStation 4, Chromecast, sometimes at Xbox one.

Yeah, it's a mess. Sling TV and Vue. I haven't canceled either one of them yet. Yours is going to be interesting because you have a kid. I have a whole different thing. But she doesn't care about television. Right. because she's still too young.

Okay. So I've tried to get her into TV, but we use Chromecast, and I have, like, a smart LG TV that has, like, Netflix and Amazon and Hulu built into, like, the user interface. Yeah. So we use that for the streaming services,

and then Chromecast for the other stuff, and I steal my parents' cable password to watch. Wait, what's the other stuff? Like HBO. Is that a streaming service? Yeah, but it's not built into the TV. Oh, I see. It's not, yeah.

So I use Chromecast for that and FX and stuff like that. Yeah. I'm now almost exclusively, Chromecast and it's super messy and I think about my cable subscription and using my TiVo all the time. You know my favorite part about the Chromecast is when you turn on the TV and you get that nice picture. Yeah, it's nice. Like a photograph of a river. Seriously? Yeah. Or bird. You're not kidding. I like that. You can also plug in your Google Photos account into it and it'll just show you your favorite pictures from Google Photos. Yeah, I need to do that because like those pictures. You don't like

those nature pictures? No, they like offend me. Oh. Wait. The show just got really interesting and the whole rest of the show is nonsense compared to what's about to happen. You know in the movie Brazil? Yeah. Where it's a hellhole. Yeah. And you're driving around in this hellhole. But there's these billboards about Brazil.

This promised paradise that's a lie. Paul? Clean your apartment. But I have so much TV to watch it. There's 18 more seasons of Terrace House. He has no time. Seriously, this. This show is like 38 half-hour episodes is one season.

Something like that. Wait, are we back on Terrace House? We're still offended by the pictures of paradise. That rainforest is bullshit. Well, you're mad at the default screensaver on a $35 TV streamer because you think it's subverting you to the capitalist machinery of the world. It's showing him a false picture. That's completely accurate.

Yeah, well, I didn't pay $35 it came with my TV. also because I turned off the energy saving things on my Vizio my roommate can Rick roll me oh yeah oh yeah that's a real thing yeah it's happening a lot that's a real thing you know the the Google Cast thing is not designed for anyone with friends who are even slightly mean right if you have friends who are even have that one Twitch of evil cast will ruin your life that's fair I heard hamster dance the other day

Deter's right. This point he's making, the tech companies haven't figured it out. And it means TV is harder now. There's more better TV than ever before. And it is harder now than ever to watch it in any consistent, logical way. And Apple is just not getting it done. This is their thing to solve.

It's amazing how many TV streaming services are on the Apple TV. There's DirecTV now. There's Sling. There's View. There's view. There's nothing from Apple. Okay, but this feels. It feels weird that we can't just walk up to somebody, hand them $100 a month, and see everything.

You can. Of course you can. You can walk up to any cable company in America and hand them $100 a month. You know, you want to see the Netflix's. You want to see Amazon. You want to see the Hulu. Netflix is now, I cannot believe I'm about to praise Comcast on the show. Netflix is on Comcast X1 box, which, again, they believe their iPad app is a platform and not an app.

It's very confused at a technical level about what it is. pay Netflix for you. You still have to have your Netflix. Yeah. Okay. So you're right there. Right. So. By the way, disclosure, some, some part of Comcast owns a whole bunch of Vox Media, which owns us. So we're living in this time when it does seem like it's more work to find all the different televisions. Yeah. But there are so many shows. There's so much. But that's why you have a whole culture section. Just do what Megan says.

Yes. Thank you, Megan, for helping me. Actually, Dami. wrote about Terrace House for the verge. So no thanks to Megan. Wow. But man, what a gym. I got to say Megan started out in a whole run. It burns. Nothing.

It's been sinking slower and slower in my seat. It's all right. I just think it's a mess. I think we're in a golden age. I think the mess is created. Golden age of content, but none of the actual. Well, I just think there's the fact that so many different companies are getting a piece of the pie

and the way that they compete is by not merging with each other and by charging you $10 a month separately from... Yeah, so none of these, like, streaming services, have CBS. And even CBS, which supports TV everywhere, which is if you pay for a regular cable one, like I do, you can, like, log into stuff. That's all the single sign on stuff. Can't log into CBS.

They want you to pay for CBS now or whatever it is they call. And that's like another... It doesn't CBS have, like, the most viewed television shows? Yes, the most viewed garbage in America. Yeah, CIS and all that. The Big Bang Theory. Yeah. Two broke girls.

the worst show in America. If you believe that we're in a golden age of television, I challenge you to go watch the episode of two broke girls where they go to a games convention. Wait, why have you seen this? Because I was on a fucking airplane and there's nothing left to watch. It was terrible.

I was trapped in a tiny tin tube far above the earth and I was out, I've seen all of the movies that I wanted to watch. And I was like, I have 30 minutes left. This one is where they go to a games convention and it was the worst thing I've ever seen. Was it as racist as?

some of the other episodes y'all have been. It was every ist. It was all combined into one offensive package. Anyway, so I'm happy that CBS isn't part of my bundle. Screw you, CBS. This has been a terrible lightning round. AirPods. That's my next lightning.

Followed my ears. I have them here because they're shipping now. Yep. After a long delay. Fall out of ears. Are you interested in AirPods? I borrowed them from Sean very briefly and played around with them. They seem pretty cool, but they still, I would prefer not having that.

cylinder sticking out like a weird blue like a sort of a truncated Bluetooth headset that still seems like it's gonna in the fact that it's white too is going to magnify the effect yeah so you still will look kind of it's like classic Johnny Ive like you're the best designer in the world and yet what were we doing here kind of situation you we've done a lot of wireless here but stuff lately on the circuit breaker side of the house there's a lot of them yeah I don't think there's a winner yet yeah I'm waiting for Bluetooth 5 I'm not gonna buy I blew through the headset. Actually, the beats X, which got delayed, is my ideal form factor, I think, because it's got the cord so you can pull them out and they hang around your neck.

Yeah. But it's weird because Apple delayed those. Right. And you got to think maybe they just didn't have enough W1 chips floating around. And now they're charging you $70 to, if you lose one, you have to pay up. One of our Tom Connors, our lead video director, like he was playing with mine and he flipped him open. And his phone was like, do you want to connect? And he's like, oh, that's really nice.

That's really cool. and hit the button and it just failed. I know, Megan, are you going to buy it? No, so I actually like having a wire because it's a clear indicator for people to leave me alone. So, like, sometimes I'm just walking out with headphones and not actually listening to anything.

It's just like, don't talk to me. Like, do you see this? There you go. Plus, you have those cool ones with the ears. She came back strong. Sadly, this is an audio show so nobody saw your middle finger. But they felt it.

I believe they felt it. He just waved her headphone cable at us. Signaling, and it's time to wrap up. No, go ahead. No, basically it's just like I do that because like sometimes I just don't want to listen to people if I'm walking around like I don't people to stop me. I don't people to mess with me at all. So I like having it there. Also I have really weird ears and things fall out of them a lot. Yeah. I'm very interested to see how AirPods do. I also I also have like inner ear piercings and so I have a hard time getting earbuds to fit if they're not a specific kind. Yeah. Well, they're shipping. You can get them in stores. I think Apple rushed them out as fast as they could for the holiday season.

I think they're delayed past January now. Or into January. But you can still get them in stores. I think people are going to line up and get them in stores. And then we'll have more gadget resellers, just hawking spectacles and AirPods for a Christmas that makes you look completely insane. Prescription. Spectacles.

They're floating around outside here at the office. Some guys waved a spectacles tube at me and just held $200 over and over again. They've got three vending machines now. In New York? Yeah, not just the one in that store. Someone. I can't remember. I think with Sean O'Kane on our staff was telling me that the spectacle situation in New York

is such that the entire line is resellers. And they literally are buying two because that's how many you can buy it. And they walk outside and just stand there. And then other rich people show up and buy them in a markup so they don't have to sell online. It's like every ticket master situation for every show that happens.

All the tickets get bought by the resale, by the scalpers, and then you have to buy them in a market-up price. I wanted to buy this week when I was in New York and I didn't get around to it. At this party last night, I was like standing there. And Sam Schaeffer, you might remember Verchast listener, Sam Schaeffer before he died.

RIP. Sam Sheper rolled up to me And he wasn't wearing the spectacles But he pulled them out of his pocket And took a picture of me with that And he rolled away That's ridiculous thing I've ever seen We've come so far

I was like, what are you doing? Anyhow, I think that's our show You know, lightning round topics? No, it's not a show And you want to, it's not Oh, you got a, we got a Paul segment Every week. I forgot, man

I do this every week Every week. It's called speaking of things That you can't buy Costs came out with Porto Pro Colorways. What? And they're sold out. Already?

And they're sick. They've been making those headphones. Yeah. Since 2001. Like the 80s, cost perfected over the ear headphone in the $35 range. Yeah. I wear them all the time. They've got little temple pads that relieve the pressure on your ears so they're not pushing down.

They sound great for the price. And you don't feel bad about breaking them or losing. them because they're so cheap, but they're actually pretty reliable and resilient. But don't they kind of project the sound out a little bit? Yeah, they're not like closed can, so people can hear

a little bit of what you... That's always been... I've wanted to get some of that. I've seen you with them and I've always... I sat next to you while wearing them. Did it bother you? No, no, not at all. All right. But that was always sort of... I'm a little self-conscious about it sometimes. But they've always been this

exact same color, this blue, silver and black. And now they came out with this great beige one. And then a really flashy golden black one. And you can't get them. No. That's our thing you can't buy of the week. Yeah. So if you were thinking about getting AirPods, but you couldn't, you could also not get all the cool gadgets are you can't buy them right now. You can't buy the Nintendo. Spectacles, you got to dance with a reseller on Fifth Avenue. It's fact. AirPods, not easy to get. Like every cool new thing that you might otherwise want, you can't get. Megan, what's your favorite thing that you can't buy?

That's a deep dark question. Because it's like a hit on some way. Yeah. It's another scalding burn for Megan. No, honestly, like I have all the things I want at this exact moment in time. That's wonderful. I'm very fulfilled. Yes, thank you.

That's great. Circle breaker is all about gadgets, but it's not about consumerism. You know what, though? Actually, I wrote about that breadbasket. I can't get that. That's not a thing. I actually kind of want it, though. It's just like...

Oh, yeah, we did it as a... Part of the weekly segment. It's a throwback. It's the stupidest thing in the world and I love it so much. The bread basket with the chargers. It's not as dumb as that bed for your phone, but I also kind of love that, but I wouldn't buy that.

Yeah. But that's not a thing you can't get. You can't get it. It's a thing that you shouldn't get it. Yeah. I've been really thinking about whether to buy a carry-on suitcase with a built-in battery. I think about this way more than I should.

Like away? Yeah, the away. There's the Raiden is another. one. It goes above your head. Yeah. Okay. I know. Okay. We're at the airport. You're waiting. Yeah. Some of them have, uh, they're like trying to figure out reasons for them to have little computers in them. So some of them have like Bluetooth scales and the handle. A lot of them have like location tracking. Some of them follow you around. Mm. Yeah. I'm not ready to go there. Okay. Until the cars can drive themselves and not letting my suitcase drive itself. Let's solve the

big one and then we can trickle it down. Anyway, should I buy it? battery suitcase? No. That's been should I buy this? Probably not. There's no I can tell. You're never going to advertise on the Vergecast. All right, let me read one more of these things and we can wrap this thing up. This episode of Vergecast also brought to you by MailChimp. Remember MailChimp? You might if you love cereal. MailChimp? That's the one. But anyway, 14 million people use MailChimp every day to connect with their customers, market their products, and grow their

e-commerce businesses. You can send better email. You can send more stuff. They've been around since 2011. The company started as a side project funded by various web development jobs. Now, they're the world's leading email marketing platform and they send more than a billion emails a day. They democratize technology for small businesses, creating an innovative product that empowers their customers to grow. Elchimp, send better email and sell more stuff. Anyway, that has been our episode of The Vergecast. A fun one. We're going to do one next week, but then we're off. Well, no, we're going to do one next week. And then after that, we're off until drum roll, big news. The Vergecast is going to be live again on video again at CES,

beginning, I want to say Wednesday, January 4th at 430 Pacific, also Thursday, also Friday. You can watch us. We're going to have a beautiful set. We're going to have guests. We're going to have live demos. Paul's going to be there. Paul's going to be there. Ash is going to be there.

And it's going to be on Twitter. Live. Twitter live. Right at the top of the stream. Right just like the NFL and other stuff to do. It's like a Thursday night Chiefs game and us. Yeah. It's all the stuff you want from Twitter.

It's going to be really fun. Vergecast Live at. The S has always been a little bit crazy. Yeah, it's going to be pretty. This is going to be nuts. It's going to be, I've been going for more than 10 years, I think. I've been going for over a decade. I think this is my 12th year.

I think this is your 10 for me. Paul, I think it, you're at 10? You skipped a couple. Yeah. Starting in like 2006 was my first one. Yeah. So it's fun. I'm excited to go and do something else.

It's your first thing, me? First one. Ooh, a virgin. You're going to have fun. It's unlike anything else. But Vurchast live every day at CS, 430 p.m. Pacific. 7.30 Eastern. We're going to promote the hell out of it.

Watch it. It's going to be fun. Yeah. So we're on next week. We're off the week after. It's going to be a blast. And then it's Verge cast time. Yeah. Anyway, that's our show for the week. You can follow us on Twitter. We're at Verge. On Verge. We're at Verge. On Instagram, I'm doing great lately. Yeah. Really fun at Verge. We got another show. I host it with Walt Mosper. You might have heard of it. It's called Control Out Delete. That's also on iTunes, as is Lauren Good Show.

Too embarrassed to ask. Caras Swisher Show, Decode. Decode. Peter Akofka's show, recode. Media. They're all great. All them on iTunes. Go find them. Go find them. go find them, leave a review, give us all the stars, buy some socks. And you can find us on Twitter. I'm Matt Reckless. Paul's at Future Paul. Theaters at Backlon. Andy, what's your Twitter? Andy J-Hawk. With a J-A-Y. Megan.

Okay, so mine is annoying. It's Megan underscore Nicolette with two T's. I know. I know. I'm not annoyed. It's very in character for you. It's better than using my last name. It's a Twitter handle that screams, leave me alone. I've wearing headphones. That's it. Bye. Rock and roll. Rock and roll, Paul. Paul.