The Vergecast - Swipe left for iPad

Episode Date: November 13, 2015

The week on the Vergecast, Nilay and Dieter are joined by Nicola Fumo and Lauren Goode to talk about the iPad Pro, Tinder, and the BlackBerry Priv. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to November 12th, 2015. This is the Vergecast. You were probably listening to it on November 13th or Sunday after that. But here is a show, I believe, in which we discuss technology, culture, whatever Nicola is up to. She's ready. I'm Snapchating. Us now.

You just didn't pay attention for a while there. Yeah, it's a show. It's a show from The Verge, your friends at The Verge. I'm Neil Mettel. I'm joined here by Dieter Bone. Hi. I got Lauren Good from California. Hey guys, I'm actually doing work in real time.

This is like real-time journalism right now. I'm just typing away. But I'll be here. Yeah, she's around. And my girl Fumo in the hype seat. Hello. How's it's me? Nicola, literally, I was like, hey, do you want to be at the Vergecast?

And just started stream of consciousness typing at me about a Tinder update. Yes, I did. Did you read the Vergecast post? No. Wait. I admitted to the world that every time I, I try to spell your name. I get it wrong.

Oh, it's Nicole. No, no. I want to stick an extra O in your last name. Interesting. I get a lot of Nicole Fuma. No, I want to spell it FUOMO. Oh, FOMO. I don't understand.

DJ FOMO, one of my DJ names, actually. Sorry, I apologize. I love the DJ names have just carried on. And have cool jams with a Z. That was my first one. Nila, you didn't charge his black. No, so here, I'll tell, let me let the listener into my world.

Okay. Last night, Dan and Dieter were done with the Blackberry ProV Review unit. They didn't need it anymore. You can hear it. And Dan looked at me and C-Furt and said, hey, I'm going to send us back

unless you want to play with it. And I said, of course I want to play with it. That's my next phone. Which I thought it was. Yeah. Then, you know, I eventually got home. I had the phone in my pocket. I was all excited.

And my Nexus 6P had arrived. which is here this thing great it's huge screen and I put both phones side by side and I picked

the Nexus 6B and just let that phone die oh you're mean no I'm not mean that's the reality we should just get into it so we actually this week we did a bunch of reviews

Nicola is mad at Tinder I'm not mad oh but Lauren reviewed the iPad Pro yeah huge to review the Blackberry there's a bunch of other stuff going on

let's just get into it let's just do we'll just do Vergecast. So tell me that the BlackBray Deer. I'm currently going through the setup on it, wherein you can agree to terms and conditions, although it actually ever telling you your name, telling your name, anyway. BlackBerry Prive, Android, it's running Android lollipop. Yeah.

It has a slide-out keyboard, which I enjoy. Do you like the keyboard, though? I do. It's a hard keyboard? Physical. People love those. Really? Oh, my God, yeah.

Yeah. So here's what I've been telling everybody about the keyboard. Shut up about how much faster you are on a touchscreen. I'm way fast on a touchscreen. Don't care. Like, you know what? I'm better at computers than you. I use Alfred and I am way more efficient at doing shit on my computer than you are.

Do you care? You tell me all the time about how much more efficient you are in the computer because of Alpha. Have you switched? Literally that is using Alfred. I would say that is 80 to 85% of our conversation. Is you showing me shortcuts in your computer? Like, look. I'm just saying.

Then when you, You're an idiot for wanting a physical keyboard. That's what you sound like. You sound like that jerk that's trying to optimize. It just feels nice to type on. It doesn't feel nice to type on. Yes, it does. See, we're like, we're disagreeing at different things.

But to say that an on-screen keyboard is objectively better by every metric than this physical keyboard is, like, misunderstanding what the purpose of a device is. It's designed to, like, make you feel good when you use it. Once it hits a certain level of proficiency, Once it's able to do the thing it's supposed to do at a reasonable level, then after that, it's just what do you like better? Yeah, no, that's fair. I'll give you that. I mean, I'll say, I love the fact that it slides.

I really wish that it answered a call when you slit it open. It doesn't do that. I really wish that you could hang up on people dismissively by closing it. I don't know if any slider has ever done that natively. Any vertical slider has ever done that by default. But why? That's why they exist. I mean, have these people never seen the Matrix?

I think it's because people like, well, any vertical slider with a cordy. I'm basically talking about the venue and the preys. They didn't do it natively. The Van Nuo is a disaster. Well, yeah. The BlackBerry was almost a disaster. Yeah. The first one I had was terrible, and so they gave us another one, which is not as terrible.

But it still has an incredibly slow camera. It still misses some, like, touches. It still gets really hot. So it has a couple random slowdowns. Yeah. And BlackBerry has incredibly good ideas about software that they just haven't finished yet. So I'm talking about the BlackBerry Hub email app. And D-Tech.

And D-Tech's great. Actually, I read a lot of stuff about D-Tech and like how it's not as secure as the claim it is. Okay. I mean, it's not actually supposed to, it's my understanding based on a meeting with Blackberry and all the reporting that we've done is that it's not actually supposed to prevent malware. It's just if you download an Android app and for some reason that Android app is asking for things like your location or access to some element of your phone and you're like, why does this is. app need this information, it will alert you to that. I mean, Deeter knows better because he's actually been using it. But I don't think they're making any claims specifically around we're blocking malware or

preventing malware because they are still, I mean, it's part of the Google place. You know, it's part of the Android ecosystem now. But there's notifications around it. Yeah. So it basically gives you like an audit and tells you like what your score is right now based on like what apps are asking for weird stuff. This one I just turn on. It's poor because I don't have factory reset protection on it.

so I can't remotely manage it. I haven't set a screen lock on it. It is encrypted, so that's great. But developer options have been turned on, which is not good for security. So you add all that together, and it's bad. Plus, you can actually look at all of the app permissions in a much more understandable way.

Oh, that's cool. And it'll also tell you when an app asks for something sketchy. Yeah. Maybe I should have set up that phone. Yeah. No, like, if you set this, the thing I never did with this, because I'm testing it as a Blackberry,

is set it up as a pure Android device and turn off all the BlackBerry stuff. You can turn off the multiple swipe up. You can turn off the thing on the screen that lets you swipe in to show your calendar. You can turn off the Blackberry Hub. You can turn off the stuff in the notification center. All that stuff, you just toggle off

and just use it as a straight Android phone that happens to have a keyboard. Yeah. In that case, what you've got is a pretty good Android phone that's a little bit slow in spots, but looks good, feels good, and is impossible to drop

because it has this incredibly cool sticky back. Dieter loves this man I've just been doing this for a week straight I'm just like holding my hand sideways you can't see it on the audio because whatever but my hand is basically vertical and the thing is just hanging on

hanging By the way I could not get it I immediately dropped it when I tried to do this Really? It was like The first thing I tried to see I'm doing with my phone right now Definitely

Definitely Definitely dropped it Huh? Here I give it I mean I'm just going to drop it I mean Yeah right Dieter's got a technique

He's just not sharing I don't know Why can't you do it Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait You just do that Yeah I don't know I can't do it Maybe I'm Spider-Man You have like just the right gravity

With the length of your fingers And the weight of the phone Dieter always has a move Like yesterday I was like we were riding the train To the bar together and I was like I love flipping this thing He's like here's how you flip it Oh yeah

He gave me a whole demonstration about how you flip it over it. One of the problems is to slide the screen up, if you just mash your thumb on it, it's not good at detecting that you're trying to do that and you might actually hit something. But if you get your fingernail under it, just right, you can flick it up,

and then your thumb does this really sweet, like, fich-h-h-ha. That's an amazing thing to put in the sidekick was the swaggiest open of all time, though. What's the swagiest way to open your Blackberry? Right? Which is, I don't know. Deeter's way with the noise.

I hate you all. I'm just saying, like, I, like, got home yesterday, And Becky was like, what's that phone? I was like, it's new prim. It's got this grippy back. And they're like immediately dropped it. Like, but I like just dropped it. I gave these to, I gave the, um, the Priv and the 6P to back yesterday.

And she instantly dismissed this phone. Really? And she's like, and she like is all about the 6p. I think the proof is a good looking phone. I think this blackberry logo on the front, the more I look at it. Yeah, yeah. The BlackBerry logo on the front is pretty bad. It's real bad.

All right. Have you played with this? Is BlackBerry still a thing in the fashion world, Nicola? I feel like Blackberry was a thing that a lot of people had holdovers with, like, especially celebrities. I know Kim Kardashian used it for a long time after. Oh, she buys one on eBay. Lauren, you guys did the story at Recode when you were still there, right, that Kim Kardashian buys. I think people will go nuts to have a physical keyboard again.

Really? Yeah. Yeah. Why? Because. I'm so confused. I don't know how to describe it, but there's definitely like a type of person. It's like a very specific age.

That like just like when it came time to move, when everyone had to move, when you know, everyone was forced to move from BlackBerry to iPhone, there was a lot of people who were like very stubborn about it. And they were like very like, no, I need the physical keyboard. And then they like begrudgingly moved over. And I wouldn't be surprised if they were like, yes, this now. No, people on the, I took the acetyl train. That's how I ended my area. I took the acetyl train down to D.C. when I was reviewing it. And a bunch of lawyers are like, oh, what's that?

Yeah. Lawyers are going to love it. but and they like asked for permission to buy it and I was like I can't give that permission to you I'm sorry it's not my permission to give counselor I think people are going to love this really yeah do you love it would you switch from your phone to that thing it's awfully tall my like I'm look at my this is my pose take a picture with it and tell me how you think about the speed of the camera oh yeah this is this is actually the I assumed you met a selfie with it I was like okay Dieter yeah I can selfie's fine Either one is slow

Yeah I mean What's the Achilles heel of every Every Android phone And it's like BlackBray just walked into it Yep Yeah I wish I could see this right now Yeah it's a radio show Yeah we're really bad

So it's like visual demonstration So the Blackberry says that there's a There's a main release coming out next month She's taking a series of selfies With a vertical slider in 2015 No I'm taking a picture of the Fern Yeah It's just not going well

Like it's a fine camera It is really slow yeah As a good lens, a decent sensor, it's just slow as hell. And, like, I guess it doesn't matter. How do they let it go out like that? Like, is it just like, oh, fine? I mean, you're talking about Android manufacturers the past five years. Like, only this year have Android cameras become good.

Yeah. Like, pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. We'll never win the youth with that. Pretty good cameras. That's a fucking Blackberry. Who's going to, they're not after the youth.

No, that's true. They're after the guy with, like, the plane. And he's like, I got to get to my boat where I hopefully hired some youths to be on it. Yeah. Yeah. Because you know what? This guy, this person, because this person who has this, who's like, oh, I love it with the physical keyboard. They also have an iPad and they take pictures with their iPad.

Yes. Here's your segue. Here's your segue. I was just talking to Dan Sefer about that yesterday and he said that he has come to peace. He has found a Zen moment around people who now, people who take pictures with their iPads. Probably because he's just like in the field. But that's because he has two kids. Yeah, he's in the field of people.

taking photos with their iPad. He's aging into the iPad zone. Yeah, he's just around it so often. But he's not like a tourist. I mean, you know. No, but he lives in Pipsy. He sees this. Yeah.

The older you get, the bigger your camera gets. I don't think that's... When Dan is 70, he's going to be using the iPad. No, but that's the thing. The Zensek cannot apply to the iPad Pro, right? Oh, my God. I'm going to the guys right now. The thing is literally twice the size of your head.

Lauren's got the iPad Pro. Lauren has the iPad Pro. Is there anything left to say about the Prive? Yeah, but we put it in the review. There's so much to say. Wait, we'll see what happens at the software update. We're going to hang on to it. Yeah, so we're hanging on to it.

So Dieter said this fine phone, good features, literally so buggy, they gave you a second one. Yep. You think the software update will fix it? I think we're going to see. I will see. The thing I wrote, and I believe is waiting for BlackBerry to clean up and fix it software is a really old story.

Yeah. Nobody should be nostalgic for that. Yeah. Yeah. Does this from going to say BlackBerry? No. Well, I mean, $5 million a year is actually doable if they can get some enterprise sales.

Maybe. There's a rumor that there's another one now that is just has a keyboard, but it isn't a slide-out keyboard. They just don't know where to put the keyboard. Do you remember the old Motorola key? Not the A-tricks. What was the Motorola that had a physical keyboard or anything? It looked like a trio, like a tall trio.

Oh, what was that thing? It was like the click. I really wanted it to be. Because it was like, it was like a trio. Someone tweeted either. Tweet me the name of this phone. Was it the devour? It was a vertical?

Was it the devourer? God, everyone just type words without vowels. No, it's at a vertical. It had a portrait keyboard. Photon? Yes. Wait, Lauren, keep naming the roll of phones. No, it's not the photon.

The photon did have a keyboard, though, but it was horizontal slide out. Yeah. It's basically the kick. Wasn't it the click, the KLCK? Am I crazy? No, I got it. It's the, the, the droid pro. The droid pro.

Oh, God. It was so obvious and yet so far away. And yet also so stupidly named. Every motorqueue that was running Windows mobile. Sorry. Oh, man. Anyway, I love that phone, too. Anyway, that's...

Do you know what that phone is called, by the way? Speaking of dumb names? Has it occurred to you what it's called? Have you caught it as we're talking? No. It's called the priv. Oh, yeah. Which is short for privilege and privacy.

Oh, I was going to say you should have let her guess. Privilege and privacy. It's short of privacy. Sometimes I say it's short for privacy. Sometimes they say short for privilege. Sometimes they say it's short for the privilege of privacy. I can't even... How much you think that phone costs?

Um, this is great. $399. No, no, no, no, $700. Yeah. The same as an iPhone. Yeah. Whoa. It's got the privilege of privacy.

Yeah. But it's one of those things where you're going to pay $20 a month, right? Yeah, yeah, of course. Wait. Is it on a carrier? It's on AT&T and Verizon. It's coming to Verizon. Do you know what sucks about this?

Is like if you start to like slip, you want to like open it, you might accidentally open something. That's why I told you about that. Use the move. move, dude. But if you don't, oh, no, you could do too much with that. You have to, like, hold it and then I'm in a spreadsheet. Oh, it's my calendar. Black Fairy moment.

I'm in a spreadsheet. Okay. Oh, my God. It's a pretty good. We got to talk about the iPad Pro. We do. We really do. So we also got to, we do.

Let's just talk about the iPad Pro. Whatever. What? I'm into it. We got to read a thing, but whatever, it doesn't matter. Lauren. Lauren, are you there? Lauren, my friend.

Oh, she's got all kinds of iPads. She's got a little one and a big one. Is that a mini or is that a regular one? It's a regular one. Yeah. God damn, the regular one looks small. This is a regular one. The air looks like an iPhone compared to the iPad Pro.

So you reviewed the iPad Pro. I did. So did Walt Mossberg. Walter, Walter Moss, as I like to call it. That makes no sense. The Waltman. And so it was funny because Dieter, I literally said this to Lauren, I think, yesterday. And I said to Walt yesterday, too.

I was editing Walt sitting next to Dieter editing Lauren. Yeah. And both reviews were like arriving. It was like two trains. It was like that, you know, like one train is leaving New York at 400 miles an hour. And one train is leaving Philadelphia at 200 miles. And like at what time will the trains arrive? Right.

And that time was this will not replace your laptop. Yep. Like they just came at it from two totally different. So I thought Walt's review was like pretty harsh because he already is using his iPad for most things most of the time, right? He like barely uses his laptop at home. I barely use my laptop at home. I use my iPad for all kinds of things. And then I have sat next to Walt. Like we'll be at a live event covering some tech press event and it's a row of MacBooks of reporters furiously going like this and live logging and taking photos. And Walt's just like typing away on his touch screen. I think. and it's an amazing thing to witness. I'm like, how can you do that much work on an iPad? And he's very serene. It's like a much more serene.

He's like, ha, ha, ha. My iPad is here. It's amazing. But Lauren, so you are like me in that when it's like time to do any kind of work, I like get my computer. And you were not as, you were like, tell me about it. What did you think of the iPad for? I was kind of looking forward to seeing where you're going there.

I was like, what will me say about my work habits? as an introduction to. No, it's true. I don't think you were as, you're not as convinced by the regular iPad in terms of I can get stuff done on it. I'm not. It's been five years of iPad. And I've never looked at an iPad before and said I would use this instead of my laptop. I remember when the first decent accessory keyboards first came out and I started using an accessory keyboard with iPad where I thought,

oh, this makes a difference. I could use this for productivity and typing step up and I would type entire columns on it and that sort of thing. but I never thought about it as a laptop replacement, like ever. And then I started using this one, and the first thing that struck me is that the size of it is so darn big. It's big for a tablet, but it's pretty comparable to the screen of my MacBook. So I was like, okay, it's up there in terms of screening real estate. And then it was super fast.

I mean, it's super powerful. And we're going to see like a whole ton of benchmarking stuff come out in the coming days now that people actually have their hands on them or compare them to different. It was like a really fast machine. So I thought, okay, so it's big. And it's fast. But at the end of the day, it's still a mobile OS. Right, right.

So they're like all these things I was trying to do where I was just thinking, I have to go back to the laptop. I mean, it definitely happens. I had to go back to the laptop. It's something as simple as I'm processing our photos so I can slap a watermark on one of our photos. Yeah. I have to go back to the laptop.

So it's still a mobile, like there's been a whole lot of quenching in the Apple blogosphere about what the term mobile means in the context of this giant iPad, like it being a mobile OS. And, oh, I have so many things to say about it. Yeah, I do as well. I will say two things. One, like, it doesn't window. And it's two, and this is the real one to me, is it's a closed OS.

Yeah. Right. Like, if Android didn't suck on tablets completely, which it does, I'm sorry, you could theoretically see a world where, like, people could make more of those apps, distribute them directly, make money off of them, whatever. But that's not possible on the iPad. Right. And nobody can hack into the system to actually make like, I would buy an iPad Pro probably if two things happen.

One, multi-user, which come on, come on. And two, if I could have three Windows instead of two. But so, like, Lauren, like it seemed like, were you more concerned about the software keeping you from like, I'm going to start using this thing like full time than you were with the hardware? Because that Apple keyboard to me looks really fiddly. like really like I have never read poorer views of anything than the keyboard for the iPad Pro

yeah like yeah I have it right here where is it okay so I mean it looks like hot garbage this is an extra thing you have to buy yeah it's like $180 that's a lot it's like a lot of money

I would be like $16 it's $170 $70 okay so it looks like a smart cover right and then you and then it folds out it folds out it folds out fold out. And it's a keyboard, right? And so in the fact that you don't have to charge this thing,

it's cool. You know, it draws power from the iPad itself. You're never worrying about charging this and that's great and everything. But it doesn't have a track pad, which Microsoft's Surface keyboard does. It's not, considering it's $169, not backlit, you're missing the top row of keys. You can't adjust the viewing angle of it. You only have one viewing angle. So when you put all those things together with the price, it's kind of ridiculous. And you think, okay, maybe they'll be better like third party solutions. But even with great third party solutions, like even if, you know, Logitech and others come up with these Zag or whoever come up with these amazing iPad Pro keyboards, there's still, I think the question

you're asking is like, was it just the fact that it was a mobile OS or was it the fact that that you couldn't mouse over things or you couldn't manipulate Windows and you couldn't do that? And like no amount of hardware accessory is going to change that, right? It's just fundamentally what it is when you're navigating through a mobile OS. How's your arm, by the way? Did you get guerrilla arm? I mean, I mean, this was jobs, right? That was his line.

Oh, Lawrence got guns. Wow, that's really good. I'm seeing that up. impressive. What are you doing? Oh, man. You guys need to watch the YouTube of this. I don't know.

I don't know what kind of radio we're making here, but it's not good radio. I think the best feature of this thing, this thing, is the fully, the fully split screen, the full split screen. Where you're basically two iPad minis, right? Yeah, it's basically, instead of just pulling out a little sidebar here where you're like, oh, look, I can thumb through apps and see a partial app. You can actually run two side by side. They're not fully, some of them you can't fully work in.

It depends on the app. The app has to be optimized for it. So you can't just, like, go from one to the next depending on what it is. Right. But it's, I'd say that was really helpful. That was like the closest I fell to. I can manipulate app windows and move them around a little bit. I just don't, I don't know.

I've read all this stuff and we should talk about, like, there's a whole section of this podcast, which is like Tim Cook unplugged. Oh, yeah. He's like in Europe. In Europe. Going crazy. Smoking legal weed. Yeah. And just saying anything he wants.

I think before we get to cook, I want to say one more thing. Yeah. Like we purposely didn't get too deep into specs in this review. It has a fast processor, but comparing the benchmarks of this against the laptop kind of misses the point. No, so I don't think, no, no. So it's all kind of like related, right? Okay. The processor is so fast, it's faster than the MacBook, the little MacBook in some things.

Yep. But not in all things. It's just really fast. That performance is like why I think basically the Mac Web is like this is the future, right? Oh, now they'll put an arm processor in a MacBook and run OS10 on it because the processor is real fast. Right. But the operating system is completely limited. Yep.

And that is, it's like, that's the more important thing. Way more important thing. Yeah. I think to talk about whether or not it's like Intel Adam is replaced with arm and whether that happens isn't the point. I think we're seeing this not only with Apple, but at Google too, this idea of the two operating systems actually emerging. Right. And when does that happen? Right.

And like, it's funny because poor Microsoft. It was like, yo, we did it. Hey, guys. We did it already. Yeah, but what they put out was such just like a foreign representation. And when they did this in 2012, everyone was like, what is this thing for putting out? Like, it was so confusing. And so, I mean, on the one hand, the good thing about Apple using, putting, you know, a laptop-grade hardware coupled with iOS, is that at this point, iOS is incredibly familiar to people.

Right. Sort of like slowly introducing these, you know, navigational. navigational interface things to iOS that make it a little bit more friendly to people who are used to using a desktop rather than doing what Microsoft did, which was just, I mean, a lot of people were confused by that. I mean, Windows at, I think we can all categorically call a failure. But here's what I'll say. Microsoft, this long history of getting it right three to five years too early right now is like deeply hilarious. Like everything looks like the Zune UI now. Yep. Like a streaming service connected to a player that can like,

while she share songs, which was the Zune, what everyone does now. I mean, like Pocket PC. Like the interface was terrible. The idea that your pocket computer should legitimately be powerful and be able to run real apps. That's like a, that's more of a stretch. No, but this is back in the Palm OS days.

That's true. The processor was waste litter. Yeah, I'm talking about like 2002. Fair. Totally fair. Windows. I feel like Zoon and Palm Pilot come up a lot here. Yeah.

We're a nostalgic bunch. What is that about? Katie Brett's, the verge.com. I'm going to write about nostalgia scene. Get rid of it. Get hype. Do you know the Deeter Bone backstory? No, no, we're not doing this again.

Deeter has like a deep backstory. The Palm Pilot thing? Yeah. Oh, we went through this. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Like this time, one time or two times ago. I don't think there's a way that you can, like, the Palm story is so deep in the DNA of the

Verge because like it was such a moment and then they came back with the Palm Prix and then it didn't work it just cratered and then they sold it and then all the people who worked at Palm who were good went to Google and they sold like I mean like it's such a it's such a mess and it was like it was our mess we were just going to watch that mess together like everybody at the Verge sat down every week and watched our stories you know like all together I hear that theater actually has a WebO TV at home where he just sits there. Oh yeah, they sold it to LG and now they put it in TVs.

You control with a wand remote. They call it the magic wand. And there's a character on the TV called the bean. Beanbird. Called the Beanbird. I miss like one piece of information here. There's a magic wand and a beanbird on your TV to do what?

And that is the final legacy of Palm. I'm not shitting you. Wait, currently? Currently. Palm, this company that we always talk about on the show. No, no, no, that's WebOS. Palm got bought by some no-name company.

CCL. Oh, with the real estate problem. So the software. Right. And now to LG. Lauren. You have, I've taken away your computers. I've taken away your phone.

No, you keep your phone. I've taken away your computers and all your other iPads and all your other tablets. And I've given you $1,000. And you have to pick right now. Now, Surface Pro or iPad Pro. Oh, you've taken away my phones? No, you can't keep your phone. Your phone's cool.

Oh, Surface Pro or iPad Pro right now. Yep. Right? Which Surface Pro, I'm guessing the 4. Pro 4, yeah, yeah. We killed Lauren. She's dead now. It's the Surface Pro 4.

Yes, that's the answer. I know. I know. You're like, but I really like iOS apps. Here's what's going to happen. Someone's going to clip this out and put it on YouTube and it's going to end up on Reddit with the caption, Iverge. Promise you. But she still can't say it.

Oh, no, no, no. I'm saying whatever because I don't care about whatever someone puts out of Reddit. If I read the comments, I would never get out of bed. The hardware on the iPad Pro is better. Except it doesn't have the kickstand. but like it's a prettier piece of hardware. You're absolutely right. It's the Surface Pro 4.

Right. It's a Surface Pro 4. It's, yes, for a variety of reasons. I guess, I don't know. I like I message. I still use Final Cut Pro sometimes. But you get your phone. But you get on the iPad Pro anyway.

Yeah. I guess it would be the Surface Pro 4. Yeah. But I don't know. It would. Okay, but so now the next question is a hard one. You have your computer again. Yay! Which one?

No, which one? Yeah. If I have my computer again? Yeah. Oh, neither. Nicola, I check the iPad Pro based on what you've heard in this country. I mean, there's so many things. First of all, we started talking about the iPad Pro, ended up at Beanbird.

So no idea how that happened. I was in a doctor's office recently, and the doctor, female, had a surface something connected to her, whatever. And I was looking at it, and I was like, oh, I feel like I'm on the set of Mindy Project right now. because it's so product placed. That's my familiarity with all of this. Like which which female sitcom did they put it in? Nice. Would you,

so you famously do not have an iPad. I say famously because I ask you on the show like every week. Yeah. Would you throw away your computer and buy a gigantic iPad? I have no iPad, no watch. I don't need them. The phone of the computer, do it. The end.

Like the end. What do you have for phone and computer? She can't. Can we not talk to me to them? No, no, no, I was holding on my computer because it's right here. I have a MacBook Pro provided to me by work. There's not a MacBook error. It's an error.

Oh, and I have a pro at home. It's very old and aging. Yeah, yeah. And I have an iPhone 6 plus that I paid full retail for. And now a Blackberry Prive. And a Blackberry Prive where I get all my spreadsheets done. So wait, as the style editor, what do you think of all, like, what do you think of the Apple Watch? You said you don't need a watch.

Oh. This is a, no. This is a long, long brewing. Yeah, it is. Oh, my God. The reason Nicola and I know each other is because we did the Apple Watch review. She was on our Apple Watch. Well, because we went roller skating as a company.

Because of Fox Media went roller skating. You know, the only thing I remember that those roller skating was Dan Sefer was wearing the most red pants I've ever seen. They were red. They were really red. They were super red. There's a group shot on Instagram. Tell Lauren. Actually, the audience is to know this.

Nicola and Lauren never met. Oh, no. I just learned about Lauren. She's an eye. character in all of our lives. And you just learned about me. Great. Um, cool. And, well, I'll get to meet, I'm going to meet next week. So we'll get to meet next week. Let's hang out at the nut bar online. We're all just going to be on the show again together next week. So this is just a practice show, everybody. Don't worry. Don't listen.

Give her the, give her two minutes in the Apple Watch. Well, 30 seconds. The Apple Watch is a new thing. It's not done yet. The people don't need it. But one day, maybe they'll need it. It doesn't look great. It should be circular. every week. That's it. The Fumo story. I will boil it down to like tweet length. Yeah, one of these days.

Should be circle. That was pretty good. It's good. It's good. So wait, would you get rid of your computer for a gigantic iPad? No. No, just absolutely not. It would create problems, not solve problems.

Right. I thought we were here to solve problems. That's what technology is for. That's the point. So, okay, hype check. Did the iPad Pro even enter your world tangentially? No, only because of you guys. Yeah, it's really good.

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Just scream at the sky. Visit softlayer.com slash podcast and get started with $500 off of server, storage, network, and security on a cloud built for privacy from SoftLayer. We have to, there must be, what else is there to say about? We didn't talk about the pencil. We didn't talk about the pencil. We didn't talk about Tim Cook saying that he doesn't know why anybody would buy a PC anymore.

Oh, man. Actually, we should do the pencil. Lauren, talk about the pencil. So I set this in my column, and I'm going to say it again. There is something so Apple about unveiling not only an accessory keyboard that attaches to your powerful PC-like tablet device. For $170. And being like, look at this thing that we did, this innovation. Hello, Redmond.

But there's also something incredibly Apple about putting out a white pencil and calling it pencil. charging $99 for it and being like it's the most amazing stylist, magical stylist yet. But I will say that this did work really well. Yeah.

It's very precise. It's a very cool little tool. Yeah. I'm so with the branding of pencil. Yeah. They just called it a pencil. And that it's white. No, no.

They didn't call it a pencil. They didn't call it the pencil. They called it pencil because Apple hates articles. They do. No, I'm with it. never referred it to as the iPhone. They just say iPhone. They never called it the iPad.

They just say iPad. I love for just watch. And even now, more so now, Cook is doing, he's getting rid of the eye. I mean, there's photos, there's music. Yeah. Pencil, right? The man's just attacking nouns all over the place.

Owning nouns, common ones. Yeah. Taking them children. Pencil. He's out of control. But it's hilarious. Have you guys used this yet? You've used this, right?

I use it the hands-on. Yeah. They don't, I think only of the reviewers got the pencil and the keyboard, the people who ordered it and got it today didn't get any of that stuff's not out yet. You can't get the keyboard or the pencil right now. So they're really going to have the full, I have a giant iPad and what do I do with it experience?

Yep. I mean, Chris Sigler bought one and gave it back today because he was like, why do I? Wait, did he return it already? I think so. Are you kidding? It's on its way back. Oh my God. You know, actually Chris is complaining about a thing that I should ask you about Lauren. He says all of the old iPad apps look terrible on the new iPad. Because they's like the They're just super scaled up. Yeah. And the keyboard is the old keyboard?

You know what? I really want to look at one right now, and this thing is dead. Oh. It's dead. Yeah, I have to say, like, I did, I mean, I did look at some other iPad apps, but a lot of the reviewing processes revolved around, like, let me try this one that's optimized for iPad Pro. Let me try these, this suite of Adobe apps.

Let me try this one that I know is optimized this 3D modeling app that's optimized for iPad Pro. Right. I didn't experience, like, I didn't, I think Walt found a bug with Twitter on iPad Pro. and I mean, Twitter looked okay. Email was fine. Facebook looked okay. And I didn't really notice anything looking hard.

It's the same as the jump to the six and the six plus. We're like literally Delta updated to fly Delta app today to include like you can buy a ticket with Apple Pay. But it's still the old screen resolution, which is just like, come on. And I think it's just going to be that. Like there's just going to be some apps that are at the old screen resolution forever. Which kind of leads me to the big question is. like, is anybody going to make apps for this thing? Like, where is the business of apps on the iPad Pro

the way that Adobe built a whole business around Photoshop on the Mac? Like, do you think that's going to happen? I am pointing a pencil at you right now because you have nailed this. Yeah. You have just hit the nail on the head. So if you think about it, when Apple TV launched a few weeks ago,

which you reviewed it or two weeks ago, whenever that was, you did an awesome job with that review on Theverge.com. I highly recommend you check it out. I think there were around 500 apps that launched with Apple TV, right? Optimized Apple TV ported to TVOS apps. I think it's like a thousand actually. It might be up to a thousand by now. Yeah. Okay. So a couple days ago, you know, I was like how many truly optimized apps are there for iPad Pro and the list that I got was somewhere around like 20.

Yeah. And there were more than that. But the ones that I got that Apple was like really trying to highlight, right, where like it was like around 20. And I thought, well, that's not, I mean, that's not a lot. And I think that what you're going to, have. I think that developers in general haven't really wanted to develop for iPad the way that they do for the mobile platforms. Yeah. And I think you're going to have a really hard time convincing these developers who normally develop a really heavy software and charge like $99 for it or $300 for it or something. Make a version of that for iPad Pro. I'm calling it right now. I think I think that's going to be a problem. I think it's a huge problem. Like a crazy, the way, I don't know, like I've already seen AppDap. developers talk about how they, the app store keeps them out of like the business. Yeah.

Right. Like there's no free trials. You can't put expensive apps in the app store. When you do, the discoverability is bad. You can't do upgrades easily. And all that stuff that has made apps great for consumers on phones does not translate into professionals on real computers. Right.

I agree. And it's, even Microsoft, I think part of the, reason they didn't bring office to the iPad for a long time was they realized they couldn't charge $149 for it the way that they do on computers. And I had to come up with a 365 model to kind of like shoehorn their way into it. It just seems really difficult. Like I don't know what the incentives are for a flood of apps. Oh, also not everybody has a stylus. So like not only is it a weird new screen size to optimize for. You have to assume that all of your customers are going to spend $100 bucks on the stylus. Right. So like it's like it's strictly

for like designers Adobe creative sweet people as far as I can tell like nobody's going to do anything with the stylist that isn't like draw pretty pictures or do architecture or whatever right but I think what Neil is saying is that if you are that app developer and you're weighing you're like should we do an optimized version for iPad pro and then you're looking at the options you're going we may not get a huge customer base we're not going to make any money off of it and the people that we're designing for may or may not have a stylist so we definitely have to do something around multi-touch, but what can we do around stylus? It doesn't actually like handicap the whole thing.

The stuff is never going to be a massive consumer success. It's, is there, do I know exactly who my like, the like, the like 3,000 people are who need this app are and will they have iPad pros? Like you make the thing for the people that you know are like,

definitely have the thing and you know that it's capped at a certain level because it's like this set of designers, this set of people that use this set of tools. Um, you know, I don't, I don't see big Fortune 500 companies going out and buying. these for their entire fleet of people and just tossing in the style or the pencil for the hell of it.

Right. Because you don't need it. And think about it. People that are used to using really heavy creative software are many times they're just going to the web and they're downloading it that way. Right. And they don't they they there's not a barrier of the app store. And anytime there's an update or an upgrade or even a subscription upgrade, right? They're getting it through the web. They're sort of a control of that experience. You lose that a little bit when you go through App Store. And then so many of, and I don't know, like so many of the workflows that I watch, like, our video team use is they're connected to plugins that go into Premiere or into Logic.

And like, none of that makes any sense in the App Store model. Like, they're all just separate little. It's just, this is like, it's hitting the wall of the mobile OS. And I think that I keep looking at this conversation. It's like, this is the moment when there's no more mobile OS or mobile device. Like the iPad Pro creates a new category. and it's like kind of. Kind of.

I mean, there's the, there's the extensions for apps in iOS 9. But like all the stuff that people just do on computers that, oh, this app is cool. It's on the web. I'm going to figure out my own business model. Oh, I'm going to build these extensions for this browser. Oh, I'm going to create these cool tools that like plug into this thing and I also like help me find stuff on my computer. All the crazy stuff that people do on computers can only be done in ways that Apple,

first figures out how to do, gives you permission to do, and then enables. And that's just a super duper slow process. And I don't think that it's worth waiting around to do that full computer stuff. Like I can see myself getting one of these eventually and like feeling pretty good about it. I'm going to buy one. But I will still have my computer. I'm only going to buy one to use as a gigantic TV. Like I think if you are like a college student, it's you're almost better off spending, unless you're a game console person.

Right. You're almost better off spending $700 on a gigantic iPad than you are spending $500 on a TV. Yeah. You're looking at me like I'm crazy. Whoa, that's so much money. But like people spend $500 on TVs. Like to college students? I don't know.

With their parents' money. Yeah. I also think on Netflix and chill. This is an excellent time to talk about that Tinder update, Nicola. All right. So yesterday, I redownload Tinder. Can I just go for it? It's fine.

Get it, get it. I read download Tinder because I took a, Tinder break hiatus Yeah You know And it just happened I don't know

I'm like an old guy People take Tinder You just get so You're like Oh this I'm not getting the things I need out of this Why do I keep doing it

So you delete it And you're like Triumphet And you're like I'm an off market Whatever And then you're like No

I Where? Okay fine And you re-download it Like Did you Tinder's like After your time

Right It's so far after My time I miss the whole Tinder thing Yeah You're talking to like true olds. Yeah. Okay.

Get it. So, okay. So you get it. Whatever. I used Trey Shallahorn's Tinder once, though. I was, you let me use it. I was drunk in a bar. And the next day I saw I'm at work.

And he was like, you have the worst Tinder game of anyone I've ever seen. Because I literally just like, hey, hi, I'm a nice guy. A big thing about. He's like, don't do that to my Tinder. A big thing about being a Tinder user is that married people always want. They're like, it's so fun. Is it? Do you have a Tinder rating?

Like like Uber customers have an Uber rating? Maybe. Somewhere in the back. What if there's a secret rating? Oh my God. So many one stars coming from this girl. All right. Tell me your Tinder story.

Okay. So I redownload it. And another person in the racked office did too. I missed this because I must have like skipped it. But there was eight pages of information on the update. Eight pages. And I was like, whoa, that's wild. And I open it.

So now it shows you where someone went to school. and where they work. What? And, oops. Do they have to enter that information? Yeah, can you just lie? No, it pulls from Facebook. Ooh.

So you can, like, obviously you can turn things on and off, whatever. You also can create a username. Like, I could be like, I could be like Tinder.com slash at Nicola if I wanted to be. Why? Why? Who would you send that to? Why? Like, check, oh, check me out on Tinder.

We got a link up. On Tinder, I won't give you my number. but we have got to get linked on Tinder. Or like, I mean, why would you, why? Why? How else are you going to super like? I don't know what that means. That was great.

No, he did a great one. Yeah, he did a great one. Then they reorganized your matches. So now at the top you have your recent matches. Oh, my God. And then underneath that, you have your messages. So like active, active talking. And then just like people who have shown up.

It seems good. But then you can only see four of the most recent matches. So like, what if, like, I will, I have no idea. Yeah, I have no idea who's Colin. Who's Michael? Who's Samuel? Like, I don't know. By the way, Colin Michael Samuel?

On blast. Sorry, guys. Because they're all, I mean, we got Zach, Jake, Nick. Like, there's all these. Just a collection of white women's names. It's a version newsroom. Just all kinds of them. It's a whole verge newsroom.

Yeah. Call him. Jake. Colin. Nick? doing there in the day. Oh, my God. Oh, man, she's going.

She's going tomato. No, there's just so, so, so, such an interesting thing to be in your bed and swiping and then you see a coworker. Oh, you're here now. You're not there. Okay. But there's that feeling. It's the same thing of like when you watch a Snapchat and you're like in a private place, like your bed. And then you see and then you see someone doing something.

They were like, I don't want this here in the bed with me. I wish you would go away. You get different Snapchat. Yeah. Okay. Well, it's not even like that. I don't know. I am really...

My Snapchats are like Sam is riding a skateboard. Yeah. Like that, I would say that's 90% of the stuff. Oh, you're not on his other Snapchat. You're on the real one. You're on like the public one. Oh, is it? No, he doesn't.

Oh, man. He just docs Sam real super hard. Sam does crazy shit on his secret Snapchat. Secret Snapchat. Sam Shephyr. Tweet Adam about it. I just made this up just now. That would be...

That would be so next level to be like, nah, I got my Snapchat job, my Snapchat and my secret Snapchat. You have to re-log in, so he carries a second phone. Yeah. Like the Thunder Path just for his secret Snapchat. I saw Sammy last night. Built into his skateboard. He's doing well.

Anyway. The big news to me. Has this changed your life? Well, it is very interesting to see where someone works because you're like, oh, like you're whatever, but oh, you seem like you have a cool job. Like maybe you're interesting. Like I saw this guy and his job was like, wait, well, I can't say. say because what if he listens?

Well, Colin, Michael, Sam, Jake and whatever other Nick. But then people have like their goofy names. Like this guy says, I'm not going to read it because it's too specific and I'm paranoid.

But like people make up their own like fake jobs. You should be DJ FOMO. On Facebook. Yeah, I should. But that also made me nervous. It was like, well now any shed of pretending that I'm privately on Tinder.

Yeah, right. Like now it's just extra. I'm pretty sure you just blew up your shred of being privately on Tinder on the show. Extra. Extra. extra, hey, it's me. So I deleted my bio, though.

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Dropboxer business. It's all yours, Nicola. Super like. Super like. All right, we're going to do a lightning round. All right. I got to go back to the rundown. We'll do a lightning round for the last 10 minutes here.

Lauren, are you aware of... We didn't talk about T-Mobile. That's okay. And I thought there were going to be rants. Are you just going to skip that? Lightning round. I was going to rant about net neutrality, but then I didn't do it.

All right me with the lightning round is it again. Well, I made it up last week, and then I liked it so much we're going to do it again this week. It's where I just yell out news stories and facts, and then you guys react to them. Yeah. How's that? Great.

Has it been different so far? Like, word association? Like, we just shout out like nachos and then... Yeah, not chos. Go for it. Lightning around. Natchos. Oh. Giacomoli. I guess?

Yeah, no. It's like, nachos are like fine. Why a flap. Gastrointestinal nightmare. Lauren, nachos is your idea. And she's swiping left on it. Who even taught her that? All right, all right, okay.

Here's what I'm going to, okay, this is a story, but it's a Latin around story. Yeah. Tim Cook in London says Surface Book Pro is, is a deluded product. And then Apple issues a correction saying he actually meant diluted, not diluted delusional. Oh. Walkback or subtle shading of facts and luckiest sound like ever. Diluted versus diluted.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah, right. Since he has a very strong southern accent, I'm going to go with, he meant to say diluted. Probably diluted. I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt. He was playing the game. You knew he was talking to British people.

He knew he had a southern accent. He knew exactly what was going to happen. I would say Tim Cook, unplugged, just talking shit all over Europe right now is the best. It's pretty great. Although maybe not so great for the Mac. I think the people who work on the Mac are fairly unhappy about that. But it's just amazing.

He should just always be in Europe, like, on a vision quest, just talking shit about competitors because it's amazing. YouTube music, the new music service from YouTube that downloads videos for you to watch offline. Have you seen this? It's amazing. No. Okay. So that's, there you go.

This is, I figure, Lauren, do you do YouTube music? I haven't used it yet, but I will say I've been like following, you know, Google's various music offerings now for a long time. And I love Susan Wichicki. I think she's like really smart and doing good things over there. Yeah. This thing is so ething confusing. Their offerings are so damn confusing.

Yeah, it's a mess. Well, they have YouTube, YouTube music and Google Play. And YouTube Red. YouTube Red is YouTube. Yes. No, not really. But if you pay for $10 a month for one, you get some of the benefits, the others. And it's, like, not really clear how that works.

I think once you buy one, you kind of end up with the rest of them. Like, I've got all of it because I'm subscribed to Google Play Music, which is the best music service according to all of our listeners. I'm not doing this. Yeah. What? I'm not saying it. The list of our lightning round, I noticed.

What about it? Literally has the words, the Packers are terrible as every other link. That's weird. I wonder who did that. Okay. Steve Jobs, the movie, pulled from. more than 2,000 theaters because no one went to see it. That's a reaction.

Yep. Lauren. Did you, that's a reaction? Can I laugh? No, did you see the movie? No, I didn't see the movie. No one saw the movie. I didn't know it came out yet.

I mean, like, the reaction is want, wamp, like, it wasn't, it wasn't so bad as a movie that it deserved to like get booted from theaters that quickly, I guess. But it definitely was, you know, not a thing that people. people are going to flock. Here's the way I look at this. I have a very limited, we all have a very limited amount of time these days, right? I've like no time and I've no time to go to the movies. And if I'm going to go to the movies, I'm going to see something that's like, train wreck, laugh my ass off because I love Amy Schumer and who doesn't right now, right? Or I'm going to go to see something that's like, actually I learned something from it and is truthful and good

nonfiction. And that, in this movie sort of like fell into, like it wasn't real. It wasn't real life, right? So it wasn't a true depiction of jobs in terms of the actual events that occurred in the dialogue that was exchanged. So I was like, I don't see the value in this right now. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Also, like, I think people wanted to know about how the iPhone was made. Yeah.

And they just left it all out. Yeah. Like, if this movie was just two hours of him being like, what if it was a phone that you could touch? I would like to do it. You know, that would be amazing. Star Wars, first new TV stought. and something, something, something.

What? There was a Japanese trailer that revealed a bunch more, and then there was also a TV spot. Are you bought it in the Star Wars hype? Just so many press releases for co-branded things. Really? And drowning. Yeah?

I don't care. Tell us the craziest fun. What's the craziest one? I don't know. They're like in auto, I'm like delete. Like that's a quick, easy. There's like a whole Mabelene line, right? Yeah.

Sure. Probably. Right. Uh, it's brutal. Uh, Lauren. I feel like I'm going to get fired from the verge if I admit this, but I've not really been following Star Wars. Have you seen Star Wars? I've had my head down in this, okay.

Oh my gosh, I just held up that. The thing just covers a whole camera. Uh, $1,500 tag or hewer? Tag Hoyer. I was trying to figure that out too. One of those words I never say out loud. Like, yeah, you're like, yeah. Okay.

$1,500 tag Android Wear Smartwatch, launched at one of the most fucked up press conferences I have ever seen in my entire life. Did you watch the press conference? Yeah, I watched like highlights at home because it was so insane. What happened? At the end, they cut a wheel of cheese

and the guy was like, we didn't bring a big enough knife because we couldn't get it on the plane because we needed a huge knife. So he was like struggling. Was the cheese supposed to be like luxury? It was just like luxury. They don't sell knives in New York?

No one could get a knife. That was deeply confused. It wasn't a knife. It was like a double handle. Oh, like a lumber. Jack. Yeah. And he was like struggling to cut the cheese.

It was like ridiculous. And he's like, this is a tradition when we celebrated my country. And he was like doing that. And then he was like, yeah, the CEO of Tag was like, you know, you can take the chip out of here. It's so powerful. You could just take the chip right out of the watch and make it a whole computer. And the guy from Intel was like, yeah, don't, don't do that though.

Like, we make other better chips for that. Like it was ridiculous. And then it's like this like $1,500 smart watch. is Android wear it's the same as you've seen is that cool oh oh oh and there's also an LG watch or bane with a cell phone in it they have a three year it's like the lifetime guarantee it's like oh it's like connected to eternity or something connected to eternity

we're three years from now you trade in your smart watch and you just get a $1,500 regular watch not a new smart watch not a new smart watch this is what I love about this thing yeah they're it's so crazy it's like they're basically admitting that smartwatch software in a decent watch body is something that is so utterly obsolete or will be obsolete in a short amount of time

that tag here is basically like yeah so this thing is going to be useless in about two to three years just coming to get a real watch. No, but it's like it's like come in and get the next smart watch it's like smart watches are going to be done in like two or three years

but we'll play for now. But we all know you're going to want a proper watch. That's the most unconfident thing I've ever, ever heard. I don't know. That's insane. It's pretty ballsy. It's pretty like, yeah, bring it. We'll do this thing.

We don't care. We don't even believe in it. You just get a nice watch. Have a status symbol. It's an investment in a nice watch three years from now. But in the meantime, you get notification. And they call it the eternity program? Connected to eternity.

Connected to eternity. Is that the precise branding? Oh, God. Someone's going to be mad at me that I can't pronounce any words on any podcast. Tag Hoyer. I'm getting a lot out of this. Oh, is that you saying? I'm pretty sure.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Seriously, one of those words, I don't. Only ever read. For sure. People don't just like rock up to me and say this word. Like, oh, you don't have a bunch of friends with tag. Or your watches they're talking about. Oh my God.

Maybe in three years you will. Maybe. Yeah, because everyone will be like, I have an extra mechanical watch now. I've been really into smart watches and now I bought this mechanical watch. I mean, also are you supposed to use this smart watch for three years, like in this state of like where smart watches are? Yeah. Like.

Hard burn from this. Like you're supposed to assume you're going to, can you imagine? Like, what if I used this new old Blackberry for three years? Yeah. Yeah, phones only last two years. What would my life even be? It's 2018. You can do it.

There you go. We should bring you to CES. So you can look at all the also ran wearables at CES and write about them. I think I would love to hear you take. Oh, I'm hella trying to come to CES. I want to be. I do. I haven't told me like that said.

I want to be in Vegas in January. so badly. You are the only one. Yeah, I know. You know, it's not warm, right? Oh, really? It's not fun at CES. It's not warm.

It's not fun. I love CES. I can make anything fun, Eli. I believe Dieter loves CES. I love CES. We have other staff members who love CES. CS is a one place where, like, like, the world is your oyster.

You're like, what story do I wish to tell about technology and culture? I think I'll flourish in the desert. I like that you said it contemplating that you're going to flourish, having not yet asked me if you can come to see. Eli, when we are together at CES, I will flourish. Stay tuned. Our new video producer, Sophie, yesterday was like, you guys just keep talking about it like it's war.

It's ridiculous. I know, you are dramatic about it. All of you are, well, but that's a... Anyway. I'm looking for another lightning round topic. Does anybody else? Aaron Rogers chucked a surface. Oh, my God.

What do you think of that, Eli? Oh, wait. Here's one. Here's one. Breaking. It was literally, it was ignoring you is what I'm. doing. That's what I think about it.

Oh, Lauren, yeah. We got a question for you. Lauren was like breaking some news at the top of the show. Fossil bought Misfit for $260 million. Oh, yeah. First of all, like those are words that don't mean anything. So maybe you could explain what Fossil and Niswiswis. Yeah.

But Misfit is a wearables company. It's based in Burlington, California. But they also have offices in Vietnam. And it gets a lot of attention or has been getting a lot of attention because it was co-founded by John Scully, the former CEO of Apple, along with Sunny Vu and Shridar, Iyngar, I hope I'm pronouncing his name correctly. And so their whole take on wearables for the past few years since they lost, since they lost, since they launched, was that they believed wearables should be attractive

and look kind of like jewelry, and that they should have long battery life, you should have to charge them all the time, so they use coin batteries, and that they should be relatively inexpensive, right? So they launched this line of like $25 misfit wearable, a little wrist thing, and $50 wearable, and I think, they got up to like 80 or 100 bucks was their most expensive and they were just acquired by fossil which I think makes sense. I actually really liked the misfit came through my world because it was included in a fashion

week invite. Oh yeah? And I actually like I liked how it looked a lot and I played with it for like I think I put it on my, I set it up, everything, downloaded the thing, had it on my wrist for like maybe 20 minutes and was like absolutely not. But I liked how it looked and I liked that it was super minimal and had the little light up display that wasn't like too much information. but it also didn't give you any information.

Right. But you had to wrap on it like a crazy person multiple times to get. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Make it light up. Yeah. But like the like you were saying that like the misfit was a company that was like designed from Jump Street not to make little pucks that you strapped to your wrist,

but to get bought and built into something else. Right. Yeah. Essentially. When you, when you're talking to a wearable company and they are consistently saying things like, listen, all these wearables are basically commodities and we're just trying to add value through the software and we think our software does something need and we just, we, you sort of see where it's going. You don't see this as like, hey, are they going to be able to build a wearable

empire or is this going to be like a very successful product segment of their larger company, right? Like Apple's going for, it's like you just see that eventually they're going to develop this technology and maybe it's going to be compatible or work with some other big company. I mean, it just, you could have seen this two years ago with Misfit. I mean, it's good. So give me the other side of this, Nicola. Tell me about Fossil. This feels like very like the whole thing where, I mean, you guys always come to me like, oh, they keep making it ugly.

And I keep being like, yeah, but fashion keeps using technology wrong. Like, I'm just as angry on my side because this seems very much to me like, and I don't know like that much about Fossil as a company. But like, it just seems very much like they're like, oh, that opportunity. You know what I mean? And like, we are relevant. Like, we are relevant. We are, you know, and I'm sure, like, I will get so much, like, so much information that's probably in my inbox right now about this. And it's just like, okay, but do something, make something.

You guys make, do and do something. But fossil also, don't they also make stuff for a bunch of other companies as well? Yeah, fossil's like a huge. There's like the fossil brand, the consumer brand. And it's like they have 5,000. I feel like they, yeah, they have a lot. And Fossil is like traditionally always been the most technology aggressive. Like they made the Microsoft spot watches way back in the day where Microsoft built its own proprietary wireless network and sent updates to everybody's watch.

Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. There was the spot network. Microsoft built it. Chris Ziegler had like 400 of these watches. So there was the spot network. This sounds like a lot of effort. And Dieter probably knows this, but they also had a palm base. wrist thing at some point.

Yeah. They had with a stylus with a tiny little stylus. Come on. Yes. It had a, it was a palm watch and had a tiny little stylus. I love that too because it's like, calm wrist.

Like it's like they just, it's just not. The whole hand. The ring, everything. The ring. And there was another, what was the last one? Like, fossils had this like a long history

of every smart watch that they could find. Yeah. And they got obviously blown out because they didn't make a platform. I'm surprised they haven't made Androidware stuff. But I think what they... Have they? They've definitely been announced as partners.

I don't know if it's been released. The fossil Q? Fossil Q? Yeah, that's right. What is this? Yep. This is your Q? Oh, my God. Let me read these names to you.

I was just checking to make sure that this wasn't under embargo, but I do have one. There's the Fossil. There's the Q founder. No, wait, wait, wait, I have different crappy names. Okay. I have the Q Dreamer. What? The Q Grant and the Q Reveller.

Q Grant. The Q Grant. The Q Grant is like a mechanical watch. It's just like a little bit suave, but a little bit clumsy, you know. Wait, but I don't think these are the watches. What is the watch? Very endearing, very sweet. The watch is the Q founder.

The Q founder. Yeah. All right. And you have one? Yeah, hold please. Hold, please. Stand by. The Q Reveller,

the Q Grant is, I mean, truly amazing. Oh, wow. She's walking back. She's getting the watch. Q Founder.

Oh, she was headphones. Key Grant looks kind of cool. Get back. Am I better or worse looking than the, the Moto 360, 2015?

Oh my God. The Q Dreamer is a, is not a watch. It's a, it's a fitness band. It's a fitness band. The Q Dreamer is for ladies and the Q Reveller is for men.

Oh, my God. The Dreamer is Rose gold. Rose gold dreamers for ladies. Lauren's holding one up right now. The black and silver revelers for men. It looks like the most hideous fit bit I've ever seen in my life. That thing, yeah, that looks bad. Wow.

All right. Well, no wonder they bought misfit. Yeah. Money, well spent, everybody. Is that it for the lightning round? Anything else? Pax came out with a gold vaporizer for holiday. Oh, Nicola moment.

Not Rosegold. Just gold. Still not paid by them. I've had many people, all the best tweet was someone who's like, okay, what do I? What do I Google to... He's probably going to listen to this.

Sorry, dude, for blowing up your spot. He's like, what do I Google to put inside the packs? I'm sold. And I was like, marijuana? I mean, herbal matter. One last lightning around. We got to wrap. We got to go.

And this one's just for you, Neely. Yes. How do you feel about Sony finally announcing the death of Betamax? I feel like the ongoing story of CES is the slow death of Sony. Yeah. Right? Like every year Sony does something thirsty or, and thirstier at CES to prove that it's relevant.

And every year they sell fewer TVs, and every year Sony goes smaller and smaller and dies. Except for the PlayStation. PS4, yeah. But that's it, right? That's their last product. They make the PS4 and they make camera sensors. Yeah.

And like this year at CS, are they going to show us a Blu-ray player? Like, what are they going to do? I don't know. They're going to show us 4K TV? They're going to make us watch another crappy Spider-Man reboot. That'd be great. If the Sony press conference was just us watching a Spider-Man movie,

that might be more successful than their usual press conferences. Wow. That's rough, right? Yeah. Any, literally any Spider-Man movie. Spider-Man 3 would be better than last year's sunny press conference. All right.

A brutal end of the first cast. Spider-Man Shade. Out. All right. No handles. This, for better or worse, was our show. Lauren will be here in person next week, which will be incredible. Nicola, you'll just be.

And maybe a surprise guest. We might have a surprise guest. We might have a surprise guest. surprise even to me. That's interesting. Because I don't know who, I actually don't know who it is. Don't.

I mean, there's a clue in this room right now. Is it Nicola? No. Is it a new blackberry? Is it the fern? The fern. The fern is a clue. I'm so confused. It's the blackberry.

Is it my ex-girlfriend from eighth grade, Fern Miller? I don't know what that means. Doesn't that sound like an eighth grade girlfriend's name? No, this is an old lady girlfriend name. Furr Miller. Get out of here. All right.

Well, you can follow us on Twitter. We're at Verge. You can follow us on Snapchat. We're at the Real Verge. Nicola has some deep Snapchat game. Nicolifamo all in word. Lauren, are you in Snapchat? Yeah, it's Lauren ATD, named after the now defunct All ThingsD website.

Oh, man. I'll pour one out. ATD. I am not on Snapchat And even if you did follow me on Snapchat Nothing would happen So just follow me on Twitter I'm at Reckless Deeter

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I know. Didn't know that. Yes, that's right. And Apple's coming out with a Venmo competitor, apparently. And I assume the Braintree is going to support it. They've got Superior Fraud perfection, customer service, and fast payouts. Go to Braintree payments.com slash vergecast. That was it. That was our show. Lauren, thank you for being here. Thanks, guys. That was fun.

Nicola. Type check yourself. I was okay today. Yeah. I'm getting too used to it. I know. It's not special. Next week I'll bring more.

That's it. Rock and roll. Aaron Rogers. Come on. Let's go on.