The Vergecast - Surface Go, Apple earnings, and HipChat memories

Episode Date: August 3, 2018

In the thrilling conclusion to our three part epic miniseries, "Apple doesn't make the laptops we want," Nilay, Paul, and Dieter discuss how nothing really even matters because Apple is a phone company worth $1 trillion. Samsung, Amazon, and Tesla earnings are also discussed, along with Farhad Manjoo's "Frightful Five" thesis. Then, in "The Bezel Wars," our hosts discuss the Surface Go, iPad rumors, and the Windows 10 S life Dieter has been living. Paul's weekly segment about "Wireless Vapes" is as poignant as ever. Ultimately, the final question is something like, "How many notches can you fit on the blockchain?" 02:19 - The race to $1 trillion 05:25 - Phones, not Macs 14:18 - Amazon's cloud power 24:53 - Dieter's Surface Go impressions 26:41 - Can you name ten Windows 10 S apps? 34:20 - #donglelife 38:44 - Paul's weekly segment, "Wireless Vapes" 44:35 - Two notches, max 46:31 - Pixel 3 leak 47:54 - Mergers and acquisitions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Rurchast, the flagship podcast of this monster truck rally. We're in the middle of this whole project to professionalize the show and do segments. Says who? Well, me. And then I keep thinking the intro should be more professional. I just want to go to a monster truck. And literally every time I start trying to do the professional intro, I just like embarrass myself. Fridgecast, Virchcast.

Anyway, I'm Nelai. Your old friend, the guy you know. Here's Paul. Hello. Dieter. How are you feeling? I love the audience this week. I need to start preparing you for this is going to be a running joke.

We're feeling out whether it's going to be a running joke with your level of hostility. I'm your friend of me this week. That's a good. Okay, this is a true thing. I spent the last two days in like Vox Media leadership off-sites. And so like yesterday Our head of revenue Lindsay Nelson

Who's like a brilliant person came And I explained out You know how she sees our business going advertising And there's a book that just came out Called Frenemies by Brilliant New Yorker reporter named Ken Aletta Like another legend of the field And

It was basically like Frenememes is real Like all of the companies hate each other and they're all afraid of Google, and the ad agencies in the middle are getting squeezed, and they're terrified. And she, this is a real confidence booster. This is total inside baseball,

but she's like, so we go out and ask for ad money, and we're asking for it from CMOs, chief marketing officers of big companies who allocate the dollars. And she's like, the average tenure of a CMO in this industry is only two years. So just think about that.

You show up, after four months, you still kind of don't know where the bathrooms are. At six months you have a plan, and then you know you're about to get fired for that last six months. So you really just have like the middle eight months to like make decisions. And she's like, that's who I talk to every day. It was a lot. Anyway, speaking of money, it was a week of earnings, all the big companies.

Well, most of them reported their earnings, Apple Amazon. Apple and Amazon are currently in a race to have a market cap of $1 trillion dollars and become the first company that is a trillion dollar company in history, which is a real inkblot test for how you feel about capitalism. Apple, at this moment, I think its stock price is 203 in change, and if it hits 207, it will be a trillion dollar company. Wait, I have it at a trillion right now. You have the market cap that just happened?

It's 1.007 trillion. Trading at 204. Oh, wow. So ding, ding, ding. Oh, because they just sold a bunch of, yeah. Anyway, our tech team is like, I'm a hunt. Apple's trillion dollar company. I mean, this is according to Yahoo finance.

I don't know. According to Apple's own stock app. That's what's happening. The stocks app is rounding up for Apple. You know, they made such a big deal about the stocks app at WWDC. They were getting ready to be worth a trillion dollars. The multiplication team was gutted so they could hire a couple more interface designers. You know, the other problem with that new Intel processor on the I-9 is it can't do math.

Like your little pentiums back in the day. Yeah, yeah. It's a floating point. When you spin up core six, it starts rounding up to manage the thermals. anyhow, by the time you are listening to this, it is all but certain Apple will have hit a trillion dollars in market cap. That's a lot.

That is... It's the most, in fact. It's the most. And Amazon is sure not to be far behind. So that's like... Paul was just before he came on air, Paul was pointing out of the Farhad Manjue at the time,

just wrote a great column about how there's so much tech backlash against these big companies. there's so much more recognition that they in many cases have monopolies or they act like monopolies. How come Paul gets credit for this? I clicked on a link that

Dieter put in the show notes. I don't know, I just opened this doc. Actually, that's what I did. That's exactly what I did. Well, maybe if Deeter had shown up on time. Oh. I went out of 4 a.m. for this Verge cast. We're recording earlier than usual.

It's true. We are recorded. Anyway, the point of this piece is basically the companies are facing more scrutiny and more pressure than ever, and yet they are succeeding beyond anyone's, beyond literally any measure that we had previously recorded. Unless you're the Stocks app, which I think has been at a trillion for like a year now, like an aspirational market cap situation.

It's the Sony product of stock apps. Yeah. So let's just start with Apple. Apple's results are pretty interesting. They're, you know, they sell a lot of iPhones. And Tim Cook on the call said, the story of this quarter is the iPhone and services. What's interesting is the narrative around Apple,

I don't think, you know, we're about to see new iPhones in September. That is actually not far away, right? It's August. So we're a month away from new phones. The iPhone tend to me, like it's a phone I have. obviously it has a great new design and it does all the stuff

but it doesn't feel like they've extracted everything from the iPhone 10 that they could you know they're gonna put more you mean they have more to do they're not done with phones that's what you're saying

they're not done with phones it just seems like the narrative is not the iPhone 10 was the next revolution of phones right like it was a really big stepping stone to like where they might be going but that business seems, as I think we talk about it all the time, much more iterative than before.

Yeah, I mean, the way I see it is the interesting thing about this is their ASP, the average selling price for phones, like ticked up again for the first time in a while, since basically the iPhone 6. And that has meant that the iPhone 10 hung on and kept, people kept on buying it after that first initial wave of early. early adopters, which is very, very good news for Apple. Yeah. And so the next question, it wasn't like a wholly, like, change everything,

massive seller, but it was a very good seller and it has hung on longer than I think some people were thinking it might. So that's the good news. The question is, to your point about them extracting more out of the iPhone 10, what are they going to do in September? and to me, like, the big thing, the number one thing that Apple has to do with the iPhone is they got to make a big, cheap one for India.

Yeah. And China. So let's talk, well, well, there's two things I want to talk about with Apple in earnings specifically. One is more phones and the other is Macs. So with phones, we just ran a great piece from Kudaldua, who's the editor of Gadgett 360,

which is India's largest tech site. Also, just like a huge tech site. It is bigger than the verge. Because literally three funds come out in India a day. And they cover them all and they help people. Like, it's crazy. And they do an amazing job over there. But so, so, Conall, there was a report, I think, two weeks ago.

Like, Apple has sold less than a fewer, fewer than a million iPhones in any of this quarter. All right. So I said, Cannell, can you write a piece for us? He said, yes, which is great. And his piece, like, really lays bare the challenges Apple faces in that market. One, people do want things like dual sims because they have actual carrier competition. So they switch between the cheaper data plan and the cheaper voice plan all the time. This is like primary computers for people, so they treat them like computers.

So they want things like more RAM and expandable storage. And big screens. Big screens. So they talk about the specs and they can obviously get insane specs in the Android market if they want them. the camera thing this is like the most interesting part of his argument was Apple typically competes on its camera but every camera is basically fine

especially if your primary screen is actually a phone screen right so he's like if you're always just looking at a phone screen most of these cameras are fine which is not how like we have ever talked about cameras on the show or on the verge right like well not since like the early days Instagram, right? Right.

So I think Apple has to get into that cheaper space. So there are rumors. They're going to put out a bigger LCD iPhone 10-ish design. There are rumors that there's a 10-plus coming with the bigger OLED. So they're expanding the range of iPhones again. There's also a reference of dual sim in the latest iOS 12 beta. Yeah. So it seems like they're going to make the moves around the phone.

Do you think Apple would ever make an iPhone note? With it like a stylus, an Apple pencil, you just plug that into the bottom of your phone. I mean, it's clear there's something that a lot of people want. I don't get it. I can't write with. Anyway, so that's the phone. I mean, it's clear. The phone is just rolling along.

It's the iPhone. It's their business. I think that is great. And people are buying them and they're loving them and they're doing portrait. Someone I know last night showed me a photo and excitedly told me the photo was in portrait mode. And I was like, that's great. Like, I don't, you did good. You know, like people love the Thones.

That's great. And it's sort of like incrementally going up. I think the problem that we've all identified with Apple is it seems like the company keeps getting bigger. It keeps getting more money. And their attention on everything else seems to be wavering. And the quality of the everything else seems to be falling or seemingly ignored or not even there.

Right? So like Macs, lowest Mac revenue in a long time. Yep. Because they didn't update the Macs. I mean, I feel like we covered this pretty thoroughly, but. Yeah, I mean, I get it. Apple is an iPhone company. I mean, I feel like for all of these companies, like their challenge is like developing markets.

And Apple, if Apple wants to keep growing, isn't that where they have to go? Like, where else? Where else do they go? But here's a headline from Mac rumors, which I don't think you can accuse of being biased against Apple. It's right in the name. Apple sold fewest Macs in any quarter since 2010, as nearly entire lineup was outdated. Yes, yes, exactly. I mean, I just feel like they gave up on Macs so I can give up on carrying about Apple's computers.

I guess that's what I'm out right now. So, I mean, I think that's like just the story of Apple. Like their core business, the phone, is doing incredible. And I think in the broader market, that masks the thing that we constantly talk about in the show, which is like all of the other stuff that we depend on. By the way, there were also rumors of new iPads and some mocks floating around. The new iPads will have an edge-to-edge display and no headphone jack. Because they don't have enough room. We don't know for sure about the no-headphone jack.

There was a rumor that would only, that face ID on it would only work in portrait mode. but Rambo over at 9 to 5 found that it does, in fact, there is a reference to Face ID recognizing orientation, which is a sign that it will, in fact, work in landscape. That's good. Yeah, I mean, there's no, but you don't just feel it in your heart that they're going to take the headphone jack away. Just that's my.

Yeah, just like, hey, parents of the world, do you know how you hand and I've had your kids with some cheap headphones? Okay. That's how the car works. Wait, but just back to the developing market. Now your child will. learn about Bluetooth pairing. Oh, God.

That's Wait, Apple's really into getting people to learn to code. They figure out Bluetooth is like a really good first step to getting educated in how computers work. Does your toddlers have an interest in computers? Well, Bluetooth will stop that. Best Buy has a whole section

of like child safe headphones. Yeah. It's a real thing. Now all of those manufacturers get to make Bluetooth's versions. Wait, But Huawei shipped more phones than Apple in the second quarter. Yeah, but I did not like not at the high end. But does that matter?

Is that a threat? No. That's not an existential threat. I mean, Android has always had, it's an existential threat to Samsung. Right? Like Huawei's a growing influence. The Android market is fracturing. Whatever's happening in Europe with the unbundling.

Google can't address China because they don't have the place. Play Store there. Like the Android market's getting bigger. It's always been bigger than the iPhone market, at least in my station. And Samsung's earnings are like, S-9 sales kind of soft. Sony is done finally, and they finally admitted that they could, they should stop making the same design they've been doing for five years. I get out of the phone business.

Sorry, man. I really, everybody wants to love Sony phones. But you pick them up and you're like, oh, wow. How'd they make it so heavy? There's just weights in the phones. Like old beats headphones. Yeah, so okay, so that's phones. That's Apple.

I think it's worth, it's worth talking on Amazon for a couple minutes here because quarterly profit of $2.5 billion, it's highest ever. That's like, it's a big number. Amazon also typically manage itself to like nothing. They ran a break even, but now they're just getting bigger

and they're, I don't know. if everybody thinks that Amazon is an infrastructure company. Right? Like, their money comes from AWS, and they still manage a store very tightly. And I... Their margins come from,

yeah. And I just don't think, like, anybody quite thinks of it that way, even though everybody knows it. Do you know what I mean? Like, out in the world,

people still think Amazon is just a retail store that's like disrupting retail stores at a high level, and fundamentally what it did was disrupt the idea of cloud computing. But don't you still think that's relatively small part of it? It's the lion's share of their profits. One of the analysts in Farhad's piece in New York Times is like, if you're a retailer, you are terrified because now Amazon has, you know, by genius or by luck, I kind of think it's a mix of the two and maybe more luck, ended up at a place where they can

subsidize the store with their cloud business and continue to drive prices down because they're able to just run that thing as cheap as they want with as little margins as they want because they've got this cloud business raking in the cash for them. Yeah. It's not a great place to be. But what really impacts me as a person day to day feels like Amazon selling products, everything. Yeah.

And shipping it really fast. Yeah. And like the fact that they do pump those margins from the cloud computing business into making retail unassailable. Yeah. And that's what you and Dieter are saying the same thing. I think so. With different valences.

Different emphasis. Yeah, just you're emphasizing the middle words and Deer's emphasizing the final words. I've heard this thing about cloud computing being like such a huge, important part of Amazon's business. And that's obviously true, especially from a profit perspective. But there is also the fact that Amazon as a retail business is just really, Really, really, really. Yeah.

No, there's not that, but if you're Walmart. Mm. Like, Walmart. I think Dieter tweeted a screenshot. Like, Walmart is super thirsty. Oh, yeah. They are partner. Like, we have, like, 15 headlines on the site that's like,

Walmart partners with another company. Walmart partners with Toshiba. Like, just like all day long, because they're trying to build this hedge against Amazon with alliances, which is basically how, like, post-World War I Europe worked. Amazon is like Amazon is like I'm willing to follow this Who's the Archduke in this metaphor?

I'm just saying like there's a hegemon And they're forming alliances Right this is literally my freshman year International Relations class But what they don't have Is an economic engine like Amazon's business And that economic The real question honestly is like

Is that fair? Like can you like in a normal retail environment, like a store opens up in your neighborhood and they undercut the other store on price and like lose money on prices, that's illegal, right? That's predatory pricing.

So like the big box store comes to your town and they, I mean, Walmart just did this over and off again, so it's a little bit common. But like Walmart takes the loss on everyday staple items. So you stop going to the general store and then they make it up on some other margin because they also sell tires, right?

That usually is illegal, right? That usually is classified as predatory pricing. The question for Amazon is, like, can you put that into that rubric because they run this cloud business that is still profitable, even though it's subsidizing so much of the investment in the store? And the answer is like, uh, Jeff Bezos sucks great in a leather jacket. Like, so I think that's super interesting.

I think that I think Farad's piece is basically right. Like the scrutiny of these things is going to keep going up Because the way these businesses work is unlike literally any business that ever exists Like the scrutiny is going up but it has not affected any of them yet Except for Facebook had to minute Facebook lost like a million users in Europe boo-hoo there They're stock tanked but they're still the fifth biggest company by you know like they're there they're there had a Berkshire hathaway like The the the point is that all of the like everything is dower and we're all not comfortable with these companies and like there's going to be consequences.

The consequences are not hitting them in their stock price or their profits. Yeah. I do have a general optimism that like right now the technology groundwork is being laid for decentralized alternatives. I thought you were going to say revolution. Yeah. For revolution. Yeah.

The Linux on the desktop revolution. I think it's going to take a while to get a little. right and and to make it good. But I think there's, there aren't necessarily fundamental things, especially in a pure software sense, when you're talking about, especially like something like a social network

that is just a web, you know, a website basically and apps. I don't think there's anything intrinsic that, that is going to stop ultimately people wanting like more, control of their data and of the access and the controls and the privacy and the censorship and all that sort of stuff can, I think definitely is driving the demand for an alternative, while simultaneously a lot of the technologies being built, I feel like that will make an alternative viable.

Yeah. I don't think it's all blockchain. I think blockchain has become like this sort of like red hair. for people who love decentralized stuff. And so they kind of emphasize it maybe a lot too much. Yeah, blockchain is just, it's a word that if you even whisper it, people are going to start tweeting it us. Okay, okay.

Look at what you did. We're right about technology. It's a technology. People spending millions of dollars on crazy blockchain ideas. Yeah. But I think that it's because there is something there that is still being teased out, but I think will eventually show up to be very competitive against these companies, especially in the software space, I think hardware is obviously a lot harder.

Yeah, but my skepticism of all these blockchain ideas is that ultimately what they all are is supposed to be like replacements for currency. Right? Like that's what Bitcoin is. That's what Bitcoin is. But even Ethereum, right? Which is, those are the two major players. Although Ethereum has all the smart contract stuff and the sort of compute piece.

Right. but no one's no one is using them that way like once you get the tokens it's it the sort of transact piece of it is the next part of it where you are you've moved value like money into the system to be decentralized like hasn't happened and then I think once it does happen the economies of scale that we're talking about with Amazon yeah literally because it's decentralized no one will consolidate them in a way that creates that economy of scale. Well, because,

especially if no one's transacting the tokens, which at least right now just like does not, like literally everyone's like, Hoddle, like the opposite of that. But the core idea, right? Yeah. Is that you have grown mistrusting of a centralized authority and you want to be able to distribute that trust.

And I think that concept, I think, could eventually be competitive with Amazon and Facebook and Google. I hope so. I mean, if we're waiting for the blockchain to save us from like big tech monopolies, I'm not saying, I'm not saying blockchain. I'm saying, I'm saying the exact same impetus that leads people to trying to solve everything with blockchain. Right.

Is the similar motivation that will lead to people finding something that actually really works as an alternative. I agree with you completely, except Facebook is starting. in the cryptocurrency division. They're just going to do, you know what I mean? Like they see it too. I think the central, go ahead. The whole question, Paul, is, like, that impetus is there, but is the, is that social

force anywhere near as powerful as the social forces of these big five companies combined right now? And I don't think that the answer is very clearly yes. I think the answer might be that those big five companies have more social power or more force in the world in terms of capital and just social influence than any, you know, anti-establishment desire that we're currently seeing funneled into stuff like blockchain. Yeah, I think, I think ultimately my hope is that like large bigness and centralization of, of companies like Facebook and Google who like try to make decisions for everybody

is going to be their undoing. That's my thinking, is that a kind of a one-size-fits-all is not going to work for people. Well, I hope when the new version of stocks comes out in iOS 12, you set up all the alerts from when you're proving correctly, correct? This has been tech earnings seasons with future crypto-socialist, Eli Paul Bader. I'm in it. Let's get it. Comrades.

I'm putting the version of the blockchain today. I don't know what that means. I'm all about blockchain. what's the thing the civil I know it's not civil the journalism startup that's like

journalism on the blockchain maybe we'll do that I've read all of their white papers couldn't tell you how that works but we're gonna figure it out and we're talking about it micro transactions just wrap up some other earnings here

Tesla is finally making money in the Model 3 well we talked about Samsung Samsung's like great chips, sweet phones and that's where they live and then obviously Facebook But Dieter, let's talk about something fun.

Yeah. Okay. I'm good. Good and fun. Something wholesome. Pure. And that is Windows tablets. Yeah.

Just like my mother used to bake. Who doesn't love a Windows set? No, the service goes like here. You've got one. Tell us all about it. Yeah. If you're wondering why we don't have a review up yet, all these units, today is Thursday, the embargo day for reviews.

We got it, I think, Monday or Tuesday. Like, it was Monday pretty late. Like, we wanted more time to actually do well on it. So by the time you're listening to this, I might have shot the review, but we're planning on building the review based on your questions. So tweet me your questions. I'm at Backlon, and I will build the review off of them. It is wonderful.

It is a wonderful little computer. I like it a lot. But as I said in the video, I have a very big soft spot for tiny little computers. and that's precisely what this is. It's just a great little dude. I don't know to tell you. How is its Pentium processor? I think is the only question

that anyone has had so far. Yeah, the answer is better than I expected. As long as you don't expect too much, you will be pleasantly surprised. I was expecting utter garbage. Very good. And I got pretty good. No, but so here's the thing.

If you live in S mode, which you shouldn't do because S mode is awful, I had like 810 apps open and one of those apps was Edge and that Edge app had probably 10 tabs in it and it was fine. They were all, you know, like Edge and Outlook and Spotify and, you know, news, the news reader that I use, I forget, you know, a bunch of like Windows apps. No, Dieter, I'm sorry. WindowsStore apps. I'm sorry. You said 10 apps, Windows S.

I need you to name 10 apps. Let's got them off. Okay, we got Edge Outlook. I forgot. What else? Hang on. I'm looking at my Netflix app. What you're not seeing in your cars,

you're furiously using the service go. I'm just opening. Okay, so calendar, outlook, edge, to do-us, Twitter, which we're going to count even though it's PWA. Slack, simple note, next-gen reader. That's eight. Is that like an RSS? Word.

Word. There you go. Not a web browser. Fire in the big gun. That's nine. We, we, oh, you want one more for the storeup? Candy Crush?

No, it does ship with a bubble witch three saga, though, if you like that. Is that a free to play? I bet that's a free to play. I'm sure it doesn't count. Alto's Adventure? I don't know. I tried, I've tried. I've tried running Cuphead, but it crashes on launch,

which even though it's like an Xbox game. I ran Oriene the Blind Forest and connected an Xbox controller over Bluetooth, and it ran, but it was a little bit laggy. Once we turned off S mode, you can edit photos in Lightroom CC, classic. You can do it. You don't want to do a huge batch,

and you're going to eventually get slow, but the bigger problem with it isn't like, as long as you're not trying to do too much, the biggest problem is actually the screen is pretty small. It's a tenant screen, and the bezels are approximately 30 inches around it. It's just got a huge bezzles, man. It makes the screen feel so tiny.

What about the ergonomics overall? Is it basically like using an iPad Pro in Apple keyboard? It feels more cramped than an iPad Pro, honestly, than the 10.5. The keyboard's a little bit smaller, but I still got used to it pretty quickly. They've designed it really well. The caps are like concave a little bit,

and they've got better key travel. The only problem with the ergonomics, honestly, is that it's just a it feels a little bit cramped. But you eventually get used to that. How is it as a tablet? Not as a little Windows PC in a funky form. Have you used Windows tablets? So that's, yeah, okay.

Actually, I've been using, because the screen is so small, I've been using it in tablet mode instead of windowed mode, even though I've got the keyboard attached a lot more. And, you know, you get by. It's like, it's okay. Like split screen is pretty good. It shows you where the focus is better than, an iPad does, which is nice.

The cursor focus, I mean. You know, and like switching between, it's pretty good. You know, it's, it, as a, if you're thinking of it as a tablet, like, the problem is that you won't have the same number and quality of apps that you get on an iPad. But, you know, you get full Windows stuff. The, the hilarious thing is, did you know that Amazon pulled the Kindle app from the Windows store? What? Why?

I don't know. You have to, you have to, you have to, you have to, you have to, you have to, exit S mode to download the Kindle app. And the Kindle app for Windows is not good. It just seems, it seems extremely petty. So that's fun. But is, do Amazon and Microsoft have a beef now? No, they love each other.

They're doing Syrian Cortana. They're both in Seattle. Everyone's the fish market. They're throwing the fish at each other. I've seen it. Didn't Sacha say like I love being in the same city as Amazon and I love competing with them? And I also love like, they're frenemies. Yeah.

they're very happy with each other like in general half of the Alexa team is just like old Windows engineers like you know there's like an affinity yeah that's weird I mean maybe just maybe that

well let me ask you this aside from Kindle would you recommend buying this thing and leaving in S mode no I tried I tried it no I tried I tried living in S mode

but here's the thing I use one password not available in S mode in the store, fine. But you know what is available in the Windows store? The one password extension for Edge, the Edge browser, which means that you launch it, and then the one password extension tab pops up and says,

hey, in order for this to work, you have to install one password. And then you go to install one password, and you can't unless you turn off S mode. So you have to uninstall the one password manager. It feels like they walk themselves right into that. Yeah. There isn't a lot of Windows S in the world.

right? Yeah. So the store is like, usually I think people assume that whatever you're doing on a store is happening on regular Windows. Yes, but if Microsoft wants to make Windows as a thing, which is a viable goal to have to make a version of Windows that's hard to bloat, they have to work really hard at it. That's not a downhill ski.

Yeah. I mean, they've tried everything. They've tried paying developers. They've tried making a whole mode of, Windows that, like, tries to incentivize and force developers to make put stores in the Windows store. Like, I don't know. Like, they, first of all, they should just, I don't know what the cut is in the Windows

store, but it should be, it should be negative. Like, they should, they should pay you a tiny little bonus every time someone downloads your app in the Windows store. Like, that's where they're at. That's what they need to do. So would you, would you, would you buy one of these for personal enrichment? It should not be your main computer. It's not powerful.

for that as like a side hustle. As a thing that's a light computer when you travel. It's pretty great. But again, like I'm okay. I like the original, I like the little MacBook even though it's underpowered, right? Yeah. I can get by in an iPad.

I can do a bit more here than I think than I can on an iPad. You can run next gen reader. Yeah, I can. It's a good RSS reader, man. Come on. There's a high probability. I feel bad for the next-genre people now. They're great.

They're the next generation. I'm sorry. There's a high probability I'm training in my Surface Pro 4 for the LTE version of this that comes out later this year. Wow. The big question for me is the price. So the good one is with a keyboard is 650 or 680. And with the SSD instead of... EMSC, which is the low-in-one one has not enough RAM, and it's got E-M-M-C storage,

which is like a MC-C cart soldered to... chip or something. It's apparently not good. They sent, Microsoft, of course, sent me the good one, so I can't comment on the quality of the bad one yet. Yeah. I mean, I will say that I reacted to the iPad refresh news by just like immediately buying a refurbished iPad Pro 10.5, which you can get for like 550 bucks. And it's like a great computer. Like that's what I play with Lightroom on. I'd still go back to this. When I saw this, I was so excited about it. it and I was certain it would sell with a keyboard for like $400, the Surface Go. The Surface Go seems like an amazing idea.

Cut the iPad Pro off to the knees. Like, we're more pro and we're cheaper. Oh, wait, it's not cheaper. Oh, day. Also, have you heard of the Pentium? What's it like, build-wise? Is it like premium good feeling? Yeah, it's cheaper.

Some people have said that the magnesium feels a little bit more plasticy than the pro, and I guess that's true, but I don't know. I don't care. It's good. Yeah. I could talk for another 45 minutes about USBC, but I don't want to. Oh, someone, a few weeks ago we were talking on the Vergecast, and I was like, there's no USBC powerports in Home Depot.

Added last week, people have been tweeting me pictures of wall sockets, which is an amazing place to be in your life. When my people are in the Home Depot, and they're like in the power socket aisle, and they're like, I got to tell me why about this. That's like. That's beautiful. That's a community. You know what?

That's shared vision. Let me know if anybody finds this. Whenever I go to a bodega, they've got the cheap headphones behind them. I'm always looking if any of them have lightning connectors. I've never seen a lightning connector headphone in a bodega. I don't think any of those companies can make the DAC cheap enough. I am still just like on it with USBCs like everything's a mess. Just to be clear.

USBC is a mess because no one will pick an audio standard. So we just published a chart. What was it? It was, what was there a Dan review, right? About USB. It was Sony put out a USBC charge and listen. Oh, yes. Which looks insane.

And then there was a chart of what phones that work with. And it's like easily 50% of phones don't work because they use a different audio standard. So that's just like an industry. That's a decentralized problem. You got to put the audio, DAC on the blockchain. Yeah, sure. And that'll solve it. Absolutely.

And then on the Apple side, Apple is clearly restricted. what people can do with the lighting connector. Like they, it's not like a secret. Like they are because they're trying to move people to wireless. And so both ecosystems are not developing. And so what we're left with is like, you know what you should do? You should buy some AirPods. And then never listen to the low end of your music again in your life.

You know what I did? I bought beats X. And you know what? They were great for a while. And then you know what happened? The right year doesn't work anymore. Peter, didn't you tweet that you like the beats X last week? Can you start some?

Yeah, there's been a whole. debate. Mike and I are, we like the beats ex. The rest of the verge staff thinks they sound awful. Oh, they do. But neck buds are cool, man. Yeah. The beats ex are too long, but neck buds are super convenient. They're in some ways more convenient than truly wireless headphones. I've switched to the Jabra Elite 65 T's myself, and I do like them, even though my first pair crapped the hell out with a bad for more update. And Jabra customer support was very unhelpful. But never the last I persisted. Anyway, yeah, I like the BTX.

They're fine. Speaking of headphones, this headline's great. Does this little green dot mean that new AirPods case is imminent? There's a picture of a new AirPods case. It's got a little green dot on it. Apple has said

they're going to put out a wireless AirPods. Like, you're going to be able to charge everything on air power. So if they're showing you the photos of the wireless AirPods case, there's a chance. It means the air power charging Matt is coming. I was just going to say Apple's claimed a lot of things.

Half-Life 3 confirmed. It's kind of where we're going to. I kind of want Apple to never really see. Herpower was going to be an Apple exclusive. I want air power to live in that same limbo world that open, you know, open standard FaceTime lives in, you know? Yeah. They announced it on stage and like the team that was responsible for building it was like

sitting in the audience going, wait, what? I guess we're making that now. And then it never happens. That's not a product. That's just an oval. That was just an idea we had. Yeah. We seem due for a really big Apple moment in September, right?

New phones, new iPads. New Macs. Maybe some new Macs. Air power. Siri will get not one but two timers. Small. Small iPhone. Just give me a small iPhone.

So we're cruising up on it. Give me a small iPhone and a Mac Mini with a 1070 in it. And I'll be good. You're not. I'll just put one under each arm and walk into the sunset. My small iPhone and my GPU accelerated Mac Mini. You got dreams, man. And I appreciate that.

Invidia, please. I've always liked that about you. Speaking of your dreams, Paul. Yeah. Every week. Mm-hmm. My dude, you do a segment. It's called wireless vapes.

Yeah. It's very exciting for everybody, but I lost the tab. If only I was using Edge, Jewel plans to release new Bluetooth-enabled vapes internationally. I didn't actually read this article. Oh, my God. I can tell you what's going on with this. So they have to release it internationally.

They have to release it internationally because approving new vapes in the U.S. has slowed down because of the FDA. The Bluetooth would allow them to, like, you know, have fancy Bluetooth features. It's not the first Bluetooth vape. So they could track your usage and blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, so you could have an app?

You can have an app. That app would also allow them to authenticate, which would mean that they could at least try to make the case that they are not allowing the Utes to use it because they could say the thing won't turn on unless you authenticate with your phone and you have to prove that you're 18 on your phone in some way and therefore they're restricting kids from using it. Rachel Becker, who's been on the jewel beat lately, also did a story about like flavors and they're restricting flavors and it looks like, yeah, that's coming to lower

nicotine, lower flavors. Anyway, that is the idea is they'll be able to offer some Bluetooth features and they'll be able to tell the world, look, we're not letting kids use these. We've made our apps so that they can't. That all seems fine, but here's my question. I tweeted this. Do you think a company that is in the business of selling you a product that you're addicted to should be able to track your usage of said addiction via their app? Like, that gives them a ton more information about how you're vaping and how much nicotine

you're taking in. And I don't know, like, that's, that seems scary to me. So I just love the idea that what our industry is moving towards to, is creating problems and then selling you Bluetooth solutions. Like that is the new business model. Like we have made an enormous problem for you and now Bluetooth pairing will fix it in some way.

Internet of vapes. So Jewel, just to be clear, they're not releasing these in North America. You will like this because of regulatory problems. So new vape development was frozen in the States. And so they're releasing this and like Israel and China or something and they could release them here

Deere, I'm with you that like the tracking is scary but what they are not doing is explicitly saying we want you to quit the jewel right? That should be the goal is like you're no longer addicted to nicotine in this product whether it's Bluetooth or not is going to help you get there

they're very much in the mode of like I mean that's pretty hard That's a hard one for a company. It's hard to like, here's a feature that helps you quit. Yeah. So like, why would you let this company do all this self-regulatory behavior when it's not in their own instincts or incentives? And like I think that's the problem Jule has run into is like they were the cool kids for a long time.

And now everyone's like, wait, what if your shit's really addictive. What if Jewel could communicate over an open standard vaping protocol? And then someone, Jewel could write an app that's like smoking e-cigrets is fun and it's a little dancing like shapes or something. But someone else could use the same API and write a quitting Jewel. That's very somber. Are you saying that we're going to have to deal with like JavaScript standards for Jewel? I'm thinking more like an I-Trouble East end. Yeah, you're going to like the straight market solution,

which is like a range of vaping apps are available. Yeah. And you're like... Because we have an API. Yeah. But like from like a public health policy perspective, you don't really want the like... You don't want the market to self-select for like,

I'm in a nicotine coma all day long. I mean, if it were an open standard, it could connect to digital assistance. So you could walk home. And you could say out loud in your room, hey, Google, is my kid hitting that vape? And then it would be able to tell you. I like that. That's coming.

Alexis, supportive of vaves. Have I told the story of how I got addicted to cigarettes on this podcast? Did you start smoking cigarettes? No. I started vaping. I was not a cigarette smoker. And then enjoy. Remember enjoy those like vapes that look like cigarettes, but they're like kind of single use.

Yeah. So one enjoy is like two packs. But I didn't. know how much I was smoking it. And so I got super, super hooked on nicotine. Yeah. And then I had some friends who were smoking real cigarettes and then I just started smoking real cigarettes.

But if there had been an app, maybe I could have moderated my use. I'm just saying. I don't know. Yeah. I don't think the answer is. It's easier to tell how much you smoke a real cigarette because you run out of them.

If Jule wants to solve this problem for itself, it needs to sell the quitter's pack, which is like, One full strength pod, one 3% pod, and one taste pod. One that just hurts you. And they're just not doing that. I couldn't tell you why.

All right. That has been wireless vapes. It's tuned in next week. All three of us have such strong opinions on this. Three boys with nicotine problems. Discuss the jewel. All right. Last little bits here.

This is, I think, my favorite story of the week. Google bans Android phones from having three or more notches. I am outraged. That is a preemptive regulation. Yeah, seriously. That's what I'm talking about. These centralized companies think they know better than everybody else.

Also, no side notches. You can only put notches on the top and the bottom. So how can you get to three? It doesn't make sense. Two on the top. Yes. Exactly. You can only have two notches.

But you don't need both regulations. What I want to know is, what? If you've already regulated. none on the sides. You have solved the three or more problem. What future Android phone made it into Google's lab? And they're like, what the hell? And they're like, we gotta write a blog post.

It has to stop. Get Hiroshi down here. We need to talk about this right away. Matias is in the corner, just like, ah! Material design, we thought of everything. We have a drop shadow for literally everything. There's like a manufacturer in there, holding up piece of paper with notches cut out on all four sides.

It reflects the real world. She's sliding one piece of paper behind another. Wasn't it Amazon's fire phone, basically, a phone with four notches? It's a lot. I just, it's such a good. Yeah. I want a four-notch phone more than anything. That's the first thing I thought.

I'd pay a thousand dollars. The most notches. but it's small. Yeah. It's mostly notch, actually. What are we used to measure screen-to-bezzle ratio? Now it's a screen-to-notch ratio. Deeply important to us.

So that's amazing. Dieter, you have thoughts about these pixel three leaks, right? So the notch and the pixel three looks insane, by the way. It looks really big and dumb. And the notch itself, even though it looks really big and dumb, It's not, like, deeply offensive to me, but it's, like, kind of offensive to me. The bigger problem that I have is if they're keeping the same size as the current pixel 2x, and they're just increasing the screens by, like, moving it and adding a notch,

but it's great, you get a bigger screen, but it means it's even farther to reach, to, like, reach the top of the screen than before. And so, weirdly, the notch makes it harder to use. The bigger screen is weirdly worse. The reason notches are cool is they let you release a smaller, phone with a bigger screen. Instead, they might be releasing the same size phone with a bigger screen. And no, thank you. Yeah. No, no thank you. I want, I think that I'm ready for something closer to the size of an iPhone 10 in the Android world with a big screen. This is why Dan loves the LG

phone, right? Yeah. It's exactly that thing. With LG software on it. And then lastly, just a couple little ones. I mean, but you to your point was like every pixel has leaked and it looked terrible and then they're fine. Yes, that's also true. We'll see what it looks like in real life. We just see some color ways. Yeah. Yeah. And then lastly,

two acquisitions. Logitech is acquiring blue microphones for $117 million. I have a bunch of blue mic. I think everybody makes podcast just like starts to acquire blue snowballs. Yeah. Like I have like three of them. Why? Where did they all come from? Two snowballs and a year. Yeti.

Yeah, I have a Yeti too. No, it's because you're traveling. You're traveling. You're desperate and you need a microphone to do a podcast while you're on the road and you just go to Best Buy and buy a blue microphone. We've all done it. Yeah, and then you're like, why do I have every color of blue snowball ever released? So there's a little bit of danger, right? Like Logitechik acquired a bunch of other companies.

They're growing. But here's my big hope. The engineers at Logite go to the blue offices. They open the door. And they're like, we would like to show you some connectors that are not from 2005. And then I buy the next blue snowball and it does not have literally the old USB printer connector on the bat. That would be great. The Yeti has like one of the most unreliable mini USB ports ever made.

The thing is held on with like three microns of solder and nothing else. Yeah. So like maybe the like the logic and mouse people are like, we make USB ports for competitive. We're going to show you a thing or two about using screws to hold down your connectors. And then this one is super funny. We actually, when we started the verge, we were on IRC. And then we decided to use a more modern chat platform called HipChat, which at the time, I don't remember this, was a Flash app. No.

Yes. HipChat wasn't Flash. It was the version. It was Adobe Air, which is fundamentally Flash. So it was an Air app. And it was like, I remember it would like slow. down my computer. And then we all moved to Slack, like everybody moved to Slack. Hipchat got bought by a company called Atlassian. Atlassian literally just said sorry to Slack and then shut down hip chat and

sold, gave the IP to Slack. But then they also took an investment in Slack. So they basically said, we're sorry, we're shutting this down. We're giving you all the IP and some money for your trouble, and that is the best end of a competitive product I've ever heard in my entire life. It's good. But I remember our hip chat days, like, very fondly. I literally can't remember anything about hip chat. It was a lot. There was an era of software.

I should write this article. There was, like, I call it the blue era because, like, a bunch of the really cool hip apps had, like, this blue color aesthetic to it. So hip chat was blue. RDO was of this era. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I loved Rario. I need like two or three more and then I've like got a story here.

I feel like turntable wasn't blue, but it was in that same zone. There was like that, I don't know, mid-2010s zone of apps were like super well designed, felt really new, felt really modern, and for the most part, we're completely doomed. Yeah. Everything was like a very inoffensive blue. All right. That's it. It was kind of a small week in news.

But I enjoyed this time together. One trillion dollars. One trillion dollars. Good job, Apple. Way to make some money. Stocks apps actually rounded up to 1.1. This episode, Virtual House is brought to you by Microsoft Azure. Keeping out of the competition is important.

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