The Vergecast - Team Spherical

Episode Date: March 18, 2016

This week on the Vergecast, Nilay welcomes some of our video team: producer Tre Shallowhorn, directors Tom Connors and Miriam Nielsen, and creative director James Bareham, to discuss the process of developing our 360 video interview with Michelle Obama and also talking about this week in tech news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to the Vergecast. This is a very special edition of The Vergecast. It's very special because my headphones are so incredibly loud, which means I'm just going to be crazy this whole time. No, hello, and welcome to the Vergecast. I'm the United States of the Verge. And a thing that is happening today, March 17th, but you're going to listen to it on March 18th.

Think about it in your car. Is that I don't have any of the usual crew with me. Dieter's gone. Nicholas gone. Lauren Grosch. Center in the space. No, if you have been looking at the Verge this week, you know that on Monday we published

what I think is a remarkable interview with the First Lady of the United States. We shot it at the White House. I have the crew that was behind that piece with me, the Verge video crew, Verge Creative, if you will. Absolutely. There's a division of our company called Vox Creative, so I just like swear.

Verge Creative. So over there is Tom, Compton. honors, who's our senior director. In the middle, we got James Barron, who's our creative director. He shot the photos of the First Lady. I certainly did. On the website, if you saw those, are beautiful. Fantastic.

Thank you. That's actually fantastic. Trey, I haven't introduced you yet, man. Come on, hurry up. Trey, you've got to understand. You don't talk until you get introduced. Miriam Nielsen is one of our directors. Also did all the post-production stuff of making it all work.

And then in the hype seat, where he belongs. Verge executive producer Trace Shallerhorn All right, all right, all right This is a huge mistake Can I take on an alias? No Like a DJ alias?

Your name already sounds like an alias Your name is Trey Shallowhorn Is this just a West Coast thing But growing up listening to radio All the radio DJs had like Super deep voices And you'd be like This is DJ

That's your radio thing DJ dirty doo rags What are you doing? What is What is happening? A Verge 105.9. Can we, Can we mute?

Trey Shallahorn Referred to me as DJ WDUragson. No, definitely not. 100% not doing that. Sorry, I'm just bringing you that ultra-hype. No, you're just bringing me that lawsuit. That's what you're bringing me right now.

Oh, man. No, it's great. Box just got an HR department and we're going to see if it works. That's going to be awesome. Anyhow. Trey, we're good.

This is why Trey is always behind the camera. It's like there's a camera, there's a person in front of the camera, then there's like the guy operating the camera, then there's like someone else looking at the camera, and then Trey in the background, like far, far away from the camera. It's always permanently in the hype seat in production. Wow. Tension's running high already.

This formerly tight crew falling apart. All right. So we got to, So I hope you watch the video in 360. It's on YouTube. It's on Facebook. Move your phone around. Do that thing.

I think it's really great on a tablet, that experience, because you have a much bigger report. If you have a headset, it is tremendous in a headset. We've been demoing it in a headset. For a bunch of people, I want to actually talk about sort of the headset stuff a little bit later on. But I thought we would just use this show, at least the first big chunk of it, to talk about how we made the thing, how the reaction has been, how we're, we're thinking about the future of kind of VR on 360 because there's a lot of VR news this week PlayStation VR came out Oculus is coming out soon it was GDC we saw a bunch of games and things and then we sort of like are obligated to talk for five minutes at the end about Apple because there's

an Apple about next week they're going to put out a small phone and a small iPad Apple small but let's talk about so where this project came from at the beginning so we were at CES. And Trey and Tom and I were very tired. Not a glamorous CES. Not a very, very tired. To paint the picture a little better, we were in a trailer. Yeah, we were in our trailer.

And we locked ourselves into the like incomplete room. Like the room we like didn't do anything with, but we just put a couch there. It was like a room full of boxes of couch and a small table and like three rapidly deteriorating people. Right. So just imagine that glamorous scene. And we got on the phone with the White House because they had asked. to talk to us.

And they're like, let's do this thing with First Lady. We talked a little bit about what kind of story you want to tell. They were very interested in talking about

her social media stuff. So we thought that was cool. And then we're like, we got to do a video. And they're like, what do you want to do for the video? And all of us sort of like silently mouth 360 at each other.

I think Tom was like very excited about it. And then they're like, yeah, that sounds great. And we hump the phone. And this is where I want Tom and Trey to take over. We're like, how do we make a 360 video?

Because we've never made one before. And then these guys were like, while we're at CES, and they literally walked out of the trailer, walked onto the show floor of CES, and started finding 360 camera vendors. Which we listen to a lot of pitches. Yeah. I mean, if there's one place where it's like,

I don't know how to do something technologically, I better figure it out. Like, CES is the place to be. It was a luckiest place. But here's a question. So when you went out onto the floor, did you sort of shout, hey, we've got to go to the white answer.

Well, Trey, you started the floor. So I'll let you start. Right. So, well, we started walking around. And at one point, we, we, basically rent to a bunch of walls, like a really crappy 360 cameras out in the market. It's immature technology.

Yeah, and CES was showcasing a lot of consumer grade stuff. Consumer grade stuff gets you 1080P and 360, which is nowhere near 1080P quality. Right, a lot of beta products. I would say the overwhelming theme of this is that everything is first generation. And I actually really want to get into how many stumbles we had along the way. So 360, it's also just not how you capture it, but then how you stitch it in the back end

and making sure you have a robust system behind you to do that because stitching it together could be the worst part of it. Right. So the moment I actually discovered the company that we ended up partnering with, we're actually shooting our verge horror film. If you guys have it. There's a verge horror film? Yeah.

It's beautiful. It's wonderful. It's B-film classic, guys, by the way. And so we're, we're shooting. shooting this horror film and I just start walking around and I see a trailer for another VR company and I

started talking to one of the guys there and I won't say their name. But I'm talking to him and explaining to him what the project is and then at one point he's like hey come over here and I'm like we're about to do some shady drug deal and they'll see you know why are you whispering and telling him to come into the corner of your shady trailer

and he's like you know what so honestly this camera's shit And it's just like, I got the real deal for you. Yeah, like, I got that good stuff. It's like, all right, dude, so what's up? And so we exchanged numbers and give him a call. He puts me in contact with another producer.

Give him a call, puts me in contact with another producer. And then voila, I opened up the doors with our partnership. John. John. John. And they were great. But, like, everything. So then we're there.

We're like figuring it out. the other part of it was we needed photos of the first lady so I literally texted James I was I was um James came so that so fast forward okay we've got the camera we've got it lined up it's the night before everyone's getting there tread I think like we set up a fake yeah so Vox has also an office in DC which had a pretty much empty floor that we like brought all of our stuff up and we mapped out the room we like paste what we thought would be like the kind of way out. Because no one's ever done this stuff before.

We just have like try it. And we had like, it wasn't just the VR camera we had, or the 360 camera, we had five other C300 C300 mark twos there that we were at a setup. Because we were still, we're not 100% sure we could like go to the White House, set one camera down and hope it doesn't fail. So like we needed a backup in addition to that. Boy, were we ever correct in that assumption. So yeah, we had the whole thing set up the night before.

And the 360 company, John, came in and started to step their camera. Yeah. Have you ever flown with a big piece of technology, things shift? And the moment we opened up the camera, it didn't work. But this is like It's just first generation stuff Right, right Like it's like a beautiful high end camera Like the shit looks like the death star If you guys haven't seen this

It's so cool It's scary It's like I wouldn't even say it's first generation It's just like you travel with gear It's like things move around And it the only thing I think From what I understood the thing that happened Was a wire got loose inside

Yeah, and it just got to be plugged in Yeah But they spent like they were up all night Trying to fix the software like It was crazy. But that's like, like when I keep saying everything in VR is like first generation, like this is the best camera.

It's stereoscopic 4K. Like it can do everything. That company is like designed it. They like have a thing. But like they spent, they were up all night. So the middle of the night, I'm going to bed because I have to interview the first lady in the morning.

It's the thing. I was like, I should go prepare. Goodbye, everybody. And I just get this text from Trey that's like, yo. That's how all my text message starts off by the morning. They're usually a lot more fun after that.

But Trey's like, we might be hosed, right? Yeah. And so Trey at 3 in the morning, something crazy, calls a second VR production company. 360. 360 production company, fine. By the way, I really want to talk about 360 versus VR. Oh, we can have an argument. I'm ready to have that.

I'm going to win it. Wow. I keep saying the wrong thing all the time. You just call it spherical and then you get both. There you go. Miriam for a compromise. Spherical. Anyhow.

total cinema 360 yeah and they got on a train at like two in the morning and got on a train in New York and came to DC and arrived at like seven in the morning with their with like two of their cameras now I will say this to get into the White House you need to be cleared by the Secret Service you have to background checks you have to have background checks you have to done weeks ahead of time weeks ahead we've been submitting forms and like this and that and we're like here's five new people like here they are like can you figure this out. Also, table that for later in this story, because that comes up again. Oh, it does

come up again. Just keep that in the back of your mind. So Total Cinema shows up. They're there in the morning. The jaunt guy in the morning is like, I fix the camera. And so now we're like, oh, we just told the son. Interesting. Because we just brought other people. Yeah, we just brought other people. It was great, actually, we used both shots. But, um, yeah. So then they're just imagine the scene of these like we've now hired two companies it's like the lobby of a hotel we're like getting ready to leave and they're just like looking at each other right to stare down it was like it was like it was not tense but it was just like everyone was tired it wasn't tense at all it was it was tired i was exactly yeah i was super tense because i was sitting well i was there it's no no i was there

and tom were like driving oh we had a van full of gear okay so that's the other part of the story it's like we all stayed up we got out of the office at like 2 a.m and had to load all this gear, you know, big lighting equipment, back into this van that we parked in the alleyway, which I got like three tickets for. This is definitely like the creeper van, by the way. Oh, that's what we're supposed to the budget here. Right, right. Oh, for sure. Tickets on the marked white van.

Well, that's the other thing is we chose like the shadiest looking van to pull to the wayhouse when we tried to drive, which was not fun. But like, Trey can attest to this because we unpacked and repacked that van. It was a feat of strength to get that in. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, man. Absolutely. So just so you know, to get the van into the White House, they had to drive to a separate location.

A scanning facility. Where the van was x-rayed and scanned and, like, searched. And then this is the part I understand. Then they just sort of like let you go. Like, they didn't, like, escort you. No, we had escorted. Oh, I don't know. So we, so we, I don't know how much we can describe.

We go to one. Yeah. Well, it was just because we were all standing at the White House and all of a sudden these two jokers roll up in their white van. Hey, what are we doing here? Hey, kids. Well, the word. got some stuff back here. Why are you on the show?

So, well, we go to one location. They check everything for us. DJ do, right. No, no, absolutely not. Forbidden. So we go to one location. They check all of the stuff inside. And then we get to the White House and they're like, okay, can you bring everything out?

And train it like, oh, all of it? And then they just stood, like, really well put together military men just stood there and watched us. And suit and ties, like, try to haul all this gear out by ourselves in the freezing. It's freezing. It's freezing. And we're wearing a suit, no coat. Yeah. Just, we're trying to look at it.

Anyway, so then we get to the White House and we're like, in all of the back and forth of putting names onto the list and updating the list, James' name has fallen off the list. So we finally get in. Isn't that to surprise? Fantastic. I had this photo of James looking like he's in prison outside of the white, like holding on to the bars of the gate, just so sad. Just pacing.

back and forth. And I'm like, yo, he's the person doing the work here. Like, he's the photographer. I was actually, I remembered I just walked around in circle. Yeah. It was the only thing I could do. And the funny thing was, the Secret Service were really nice. And every night and a voice would come out at the door, sorry, sir, you're still not in the system. Yeah. Could happen to anybody. Well, because James is not... But it happened to me.

Well, because James is not an American citizen, he's... I am British. Right, British. I am British. Is it British or UK? It is British. It is British and I lived in the UK. All Britain. This could go down a whole thing. Let's not play this game.

Let's not play. Do you think it's called VR a 360 video? Anyway. So because James is not a US citizen, he had to get a special check and then wear a different color badge and have a minder. Because there's nothing more dangerous to our country than a British national. I don't know if you know about the war of 1812, but it was a situation. So that's like James like wait outside. So we're inside, we're setting up.

Miriam is like furiously setting up gear just everywhere. Yes. And we have this massive crew. We're in the White House. And finally, obviously, Michelle Obama shows up. James takes her photo. You can see it out in the video. We shoot the thing.

Tell me what shooting it was like. It's kind of crazy because you're preparing and you're thinking, I just need everything to work. Yeah. Because the funny thing was that the White House wanted it to be a tethered camera so that her crew could see the pictures as they came in. And there's people everywhere. And you're just thinking if the camera cable gets pulled out midway through the shoot,

and I'm over here. But the funny thing was, when we started shooting, I couldn't actually see the computer anymore. Neither could for the First Lady. And I actually stopped and said at one point, it's funny, you know, you and me are the only people who can't see a single picture that's been taking it. And everybody else is going, fantastic.

That got picked up. The end joke is that that's what it said. in the very beginning of the video, numerous times. And trust me, it goes on. It goes on. Thank you. Well, no, because he's direct. It's like, she's a thing.

He had to direct her. Yeah. And it's great. And she got great photos. She was very good. It was fantastic. It was fantastic. I mean, she really got into it.

It was great. And we got some stuff, as you've seen. Yeah. 20 minutes goes by very, very quickly in those circumstances. Yeah, those photos were only taken in just 20 minutes. It's incredible. And then, I got a question here. Oh, by the way, tweet it being,

if you want to ask questions between any of these people. Also, if you want to make a poll for, if it's 360 or VR, go for it. We're spherical. You're going to get there, Miriam. This is vision. This is what vision is like. Just say it over and over and over again because it comes true. So, Miriam, you were, like, operating cameras here in the room.

What was it like for you? I mean, the actual shoot, aside from, like, the glow off of Michelle Obama, was really easy. Like, once everything was set up and everything was working again, the actual shoot was very chill. Yeah. She's, like, chill. She's like, she's fantastic. She's amazing. Fantastic.

Trane is a crush of the first lady. Cut away. I know. I know it's true. I'm just putting it out there. Just gave that peep to the camera. No. No, no, no, no.

How are you charging anything here? Let me just say she's, she has such an aura, a glow to her that's just, it's so captivating. Like, she commands attention. Yeah. And when she steps into the room, it's just like, oh, my God. Yeah. And she's tall. The queen has arrived.

She's super tall. She's so tall. Yeah. No, and she was great. And she was really, like, the interview, you should watch the interview because she says smart, interesting things in the interview. And she's like totally on top of it. But she was also just a commanding presence in the room.

And like, she really just thought through all the things that, all the things that we were talking about. And she charmed the hell out of everyone. Yes. Yeah. Complete. At the very end, she took James's glasses off her face. And I thought James was going to melt into a puddle.

the floor. Yes, I was. I felt like I was about seven years old. I mean, told what to do. And I didn't mind at all. Anyway, so we're done there. We pack up, we leave the White House. I mean, just literally, from three to five in the morning, Trey and I are like, this isn't going to work. Like, we're texting each other. Cameras are broken. But everything came together. Everything worked. Describe what happened next. Like, how do you go from shooting two, three, 60 cameras and there for you? Wow. Okay. Ready? Here we go. This is Tom and Miriam, Tom. I want to know what happened next. I mean, so the process is actually not very different than any regular video we'd make, right? So we brought all of our footage back.

We ingested all the five cameras that we shot with besides the 360 camera. The two 360 teams came back, gave us proxies maybe, what was like two weeks, three weeks after? It was, it was like long, but not too long after. So you didn't have final files. You just had like early renders. Yeah. So yeah, in an ideal world, it's like this is the file, this is the same length of file you're going to get. This is the same amount of time. It's just like low quality stitches and perfect. Maybe you'll see double of me in one place or double of someone else. Or the entire video. Or the entire video. Walk me through something really basic. So if the cameras you were using, they were really just collections of cameras, right?

Point in all different directions. Right. Tell me, Miriam, tell me like what a stitch is. Like just explain it to the listener for a second. Okay. So they, it's the same way if you like took a panorama a photo with your iPhone or whatever. It takes all of these pictures and seams them together, except for this one's seaming them together in a big sphere and then flattening them out into an equorectangular projection, which is similar to the way you see your world maps, like in your high school classroom.

Yeah. Because that's the globe made flat. So it's like distorted in the bottom. Yeah, we edited in that distortion. Yeah, we edited in the echo rectangular. Wow. Which looked crazy. By the end, we were all looking at it, and it was very normal to us.

Yeah, it's, and it, especially near the center, it does look almost identical. Just like the world in the center parts of that stretched out projection of the earth. Like they do look pretty normal. And then like as you grow further away in Greenland looks awful, just like the bottom of the floor looks bad. I mean, there's some really great footage of Trey during the photo shoot, like looking into Total Cinema's camera. And his head becomes like the size. Also, also one thing, I don't know if you guys caught this.

But I was so determined to stand next to Michelle Obama when we were taking the photo at the end that I went behind whoever was in front of her and was standing on my tippy toes the entire time. So I want you all to go back. Who else are that? Best East drag in the thing. Watch the end. Are you jumping? The first person is going to get me.

No, standing on my tippy toes because I'm trying to make sure that my face can be seen, but I'm also as close to Michelle Obama. The best east drag is when we were setting up the 360 camera, we said this is recording the entire room. And her staff was like, oh, where are we going? going to put the Secret Service because the Secret Service can't be on camera. So I'm not going to show it. But if you look at it, you can see how they were like hiding. It's in there. There's like, yeah, they peek in at one point.

Oh, I never saw it. Yeah, I watched. Yeah, it's crazy. But they were not a lot. They don't want their movements to be known. Like they don't want people that study their patterns. So they're in there. Right.

But they are very, they figured out how to avoid the camera. I've looked at this piece a lot of times. I've never seen it. So I'm curious. I'm not going to tell you. I mean, you've never looked at that, like, part of it. But do you remember when we were setting up the photography? These guys are so good.

And ladies, Miriam hid her pass. And this guy suddenly appeared. Like, jing-j-j-j-j-j-exc. Excuse me, madam, can you show the pass? Yeah. She pulled it out. We turned around, he'd gone. Don't know where.

He was amazing. That's actually a ghost. That was Abraham Lincoln. That was, I don't want to. That was Abraham Lincoln. That would be so cool. That'd be amazing. The ghost of, like, tap shows up.

Where's your badge? Poops away. In my defense, I didn't hide it. The chain broke. Oh, I see. Oh, I just thought you're being a little bit rebellious. I mean, obviously. Making a state break.

Anyhow, I got a question here. Discuss 360 versus VR. We're going to get there. Oh, man. I promise we're going to get there. I think this is the thing we just tease the entire episode and never get to it. Well, he says obviously we are. Duh.

See? So what's the, what is it? No. Let's finish it. you've got your octo-rectangular map, Ecto. Ecto. Sounds like something from Ghostbusters.

Like equal. It definitely sounds like a good from Ghostbusters. Equator. Equator makes a lot more sense. Equa rectangular. It's projected so the equator is correct. So, equator. Okay.

So you've got that, it's what, it's in Premiere. Yep. Right. And then you were running after-fax. Right. Do we have plugins? Like, how do we make it? Like, I think it's not obvious to people how this stuff actually gets made.

Yeah. So, I mean, the equatechion projection is just a two-by-one kind of a longer video than you would normally see. Like, you only get 16 by 9. And then we just edit with that. So we make cuts the same way we'll make cuts in premiere. The more tricky stuff comes with how you make cuts look good, because cutting video in a little box makes sense. Like, we've all watched a lot of film, we've all watched a lot of movies.

We understand that concept. But in 360, it's a much different experience to have your... entire world flashing and changing all the time. So figuring how to do that was kind of where we landed. And I'll let Miriam take away with some of the afterfix trick we learned how to figure out how to how to make cuts and how to hide things in 360. Okay. I mean as for plugins, we relied pretty heavily on metal skybox which just like distorts everything for you so you don't do the math, which is great when you're editing at like two in the morning. I don't know if it's very important. I don't know if it's obvious here.

Miriam almost died making this thing. Yeah. So, but like, we tried a couple of different ways to disguise the cuts in that distracting people by making them look at these great floating boxes of tablets and phones. We tried a couple things with having the background blur so you don't actually see the cut happen, which they're like varying degrees in the comments of how well that worked. Yeah. Oh, really?

Really? I thought it worked really well. My friends on, like, the spherical video side of the world were like, oh. Really? I didn't use a Mobius transit. I was like, well, sorry. Wow.

By the way, spherical video world cuts like a knife. That's what you guys. Careful. Awsh. Well, so then talk about the next thing, which is, so we got through the editing where we've got proxy files or stitching it, or you're editing the stitch files. Then we added this data layer. I think of it is the data layer over it, like a virtual world that's full of little

animated cell phones and things. How did that work? I mean, I would, so how did it work? I'll talk sort of conceptually, and I think Miriam can talk about technically. Yeah, I have a question here that's like, where to go, let's talk about the UI and the piece, because it actually has UI, right? Here it is, Alex Ryder says, what kind of paradigms are used to help guide the viewer to look at the focus item in 360 viewers? Sure.

So, conceptually, like, think of these kind of worlds we made up is really no different than animation that you would do in a video to help explain something. Or, you know, B-roll, you would throw over concepts. kind of help reinforce that. It's the same idea in this 360 video. It's just happening all over. And one of the things we talked about was that we kind of wanted you to have, like, if you're going to put yourself in 360, you might as well get rewarded for using 360. So the idea was to always kind of like give you something. So if you want to look completely behind you, there's always something you could look at. Or if you want to look to the left or the right, there's always

like at least some element that'll give you into a new direction. And the graphics kind of help push you in that direction is where we want. wanted you to, but didn't just say, okay, now look here, now look there, because that would get boring, and everyone wants to do what they want to do. How did they work? Was that the question? Yeah. So that's the concept. And we talked about it. And I didn't actually think of it in terms of being a user interface until I was just at South by Southwest. And our company has a director of user experience on our product team. And he started talking to me, like, you built a UI. Like, there's a little orange dot that like helps you move around the scene. There, a lot, what was

interesting to me, and I actually want to talk about this in more depth later, but I put a lot of people into a gear VR and had them watch it, and they thought the thing was interactive. They instinctively, because it's so much like a user interface, they would look at things and then like tap on the side of the thing to try to zoom into that moment. Right. So a lot of that is like, we know about where you're probably going to look, especially for the internet view. There's three people in chairs and they're talking. So that's the most interesting thing. So graphics emerge from there. Right. So a lot of you, if you watch a lot of the graphics, we'll have little elements that Miriam helped make that pop up and then push out this way or push out to the right

and they curve and that makes your eye kind of follow them and when they land a iPhone pops up or an Android phone pops up and there is a video in there and you start watching that and maybe there's another one that extends from there and it's all about graphics are always trying to push you in a certain direction but it's not necessarily you need to follow them and at one point we have this Vine interview right where or Vine Q&A that Michelle did and she's talking to kids as they ask questions. And what we did was we put a little orange element behind the phone. And when she stopped asking, when someone asked a question and she started to answer,

that ball would shift to the next phone. So your eye would follow that. It's like, it's that like movement in response. You're seeing something move and you're responding to it. And that's sort of the idea behind like guiding people when they need to be guided and but giving them something to look at when they're not. I thought the best, the fun one was the tire for. the car way they just went all the way around you could follow it all the way

around back to the beginning yeah for three people on our video team you guys are all terrible talking to the microphone by the way I'm sorry yeah all three of you are bad at this um we're behind the cameras yeah for the record well let me tell you me a little tip from in front I'm sorry so Miriam as you were like building these layers and we there's a great company called Lunar North that helped us do all this stuff so you got the you have the video we have you have the after effect, the animation, how did you put this stuff together in Tweeko? Like, how did you make it work?

Like, I think our, a bunch of questions I've had is like, how did you layer in the Vine video onto an animation into a VR world? Like, what was that process like? I mean, again, it was like, it's wildly similar to when you regularly animate in just like a bigger, because we did everything in the echo rectangular flat out thing. The tricky bit was like exporting it, getting into a headset to like, see, does this work? Does this not work? But for the most part, you layer it in.

you apply metal software if it's not on the equator or closer yeah yeah there's like sometimes when we didn't use it and did use it like messing around seeing what worked and what didn't but for them for the most part it's very similar just much bigger files than we've been working with so our computers struggled a little bit yeah i mean i would say like yeah they struggled a lot that that that larger rectangle that we've been working with is really absolutely no different and it doesn't really get changed into a sphere until you upload it to something like Facebook or YouTube. And their software is doing the wrapping into what looks like a sphere. Right.

So like for us, really, the secret of it is, like it wasn't that different. Right. That's kind of incredible. You weren't like editing in 360. Unfortunately, I would that one kind of cool. Oh, man. I have thoughts about that. Tom sent me a text.

It was like, I've set up virtual desktops in the Vive and I'm never leaving again. So Virgilum, Jordan Opplinger came in on. Saturday and he was like I want to look at the vibe and then you like set up the virtual desktop and let me tell you this yeah in a year from now I will be editing all my videos in a swivel chair with a keyboard attached to me and a mouse and I'm just going to turn around and edit like that because I think it's the best way to do it like I'll have as many monitors as I want around me yeah I can just eventually I'll be able to just touch things so I'll just grab deep controllers oh my god grab my footage from a bin cut it in there yeah

It sounds like the best way to live. Yeah. Except for the eye strain. And you know what's going to be incredible, though, is that the interfaces are going to get way more and more skemorphic. So you'll actually be grabbing rolls of film, of footage. You'll have a virtual cutter. Yeah. Yeah.

You'll be scotch taping them to get. Right. Like, you went back to analog, you're like, there was like an analog VR movement. I'm down for it. I'm coining it right now, analog VR. Someone by the domain. It's just, it's doing things as analog as possible in a totally virtual reality. I've got a great vinyl collection in virtual reality.

See, that you can call virtual reality. Okay, let's get into it, man. Oh, wow. Are we thrown down? Yeah. Look, here's what I think. Okay. I've watched.

State your argument. Here's my argument. It's very simple. Okay. People are dumb. Right? Just go with me. Does that include?

No, just go with me on this. Only one term can win. Only one term is going to win. I have seen, I've seen so much coverage of our video on other sites. half of them were like watch the verges amazing 3D video and I was like I know that's the worst are you are you do you know with 3D you understand you live in three dimensions and then on the screen there's only two right like I'm gonna I'll argue this because I know your your argument's going to win if you want to say that then you could say if you're saying that is true you should you should

also say that 3D is also equally as valid as VR no define your terms my terms is that VR is an experience through which you can watch 360. It is not 360 video. That's, no, that's not, okay. That is too complicated. Let's define the word definition. No. Zoo crew tray over here.

I'm the bed. I'm just the band over here. Just make sounds, music. No, define VR. And if you don't do it, I'm making Miriam do it. Because she's ready. She's like bouncing with it. Miriam just do it.

Spirical. I mean, it's fair. You can, so, I don't know if this is the argument I want to make. It's definitely not. I mean, you can watch films on TV, but it's not TV when you're watching it, right? What?

Let me explain. Yeah, I love you, Tom. Here's a question. If a film is on TV. Wow, your squad just broke up, dude. Here's a question. Can you have VR that's not 360? No.

Yes. Because you can get in the gear and you can watch a regular, like, TV, movie, whatever. Okay. In their little, like, weird movie, video. And you can watch 360 without VR. So saying VR, how? You spin your phone around. How we've all been watching it.

Right. Do you get in the vibe every time? Let me try. Because then you have to say augmented reality is the same as virtual reality. Do you want to go down this argument? I'm ready to do it. Let me go to so on. Spherical is better.

No numbers. Wait, everyone stopped for one second. Spirical people are scary. Let me try to define these terms, as I understand them now. What we're saying about three. 360 video is it is video in which the camera is stationary you can like look around the camera you can look around and that's 360 degrees and that is deliverable to a wide variety of platforms right desktop computers phones tablets up to a headset right in the headset that thing is often

virtual reality right you're in the space you feel like you're in the room right but 360 video on a desktop computer it's not virtual reality because you're not in the room virtual reality requires the headset so you look around like you're in a virtual space. Right. This is the argument you're making, right? I know it's the argument you're making because I believe it's true. You just don't think people are ready to accept it. I think what I just said is so nerdy that everyone's just going to call all of that,

that whole chain of things VR. I mean, if the argument, if your argument is that people are just... I think the VR-A-R thing is going to just collapse. Yeah, I agree with that. But I think that's like a more intro. That's even a more nerdy conversation to have. Well, it's the Vergecast. Like this, if we're going to do it, this is where we're going to do it.

There will also be jokes and Trey will make some sounds. Hey, you wait till Merriam starts making sounds. We have to talk about that. Is that how you think of it? Tell me, give me your argument for spherical, which I've been dismissive of only to harden you into making the argument with as much passion as I want you to make. I mean, spherical is just a better word than both of them. Yeah.

That's why. I mean, it's not an acronym. It's not a number. And you're entering a sphere space. It's the equerrequeringal rejection. It's like a globe. That's my argument for it. It's so into Stella.

Something it was. stand behind. Spherical video. Spherical video. Because then you have to like decide. But nobody says spherical video. Well, because it hasn't happened yet.

We're making it happen now. Yeah, we're starting a tram. This is it. Sorry, I just don't think it's going to catch on. She did tweet it. I don't know. To me,

this argument about terms is it needs to get solved. Right? Because we should be making the right we solve, right? We should be making the thing that is correct and make that part of the culture, right? That's our job. That's our job. We do run a media organization. Like a really influential tech video.

Oh my God. I feel like Tom was about to have a Kanye West moment. Yeah. That's our job. Sorry on the site. We don't know what that means. No, because go for the comment. Here's what I'm saying.

I think we can push for it. We've tried to push for other names. We have lost many times. For example, but we should be trying to fight up. The word fab would exist. I did everything I could in my life. Like literally everything I could.

I left my family. I don't have any friends. I was like, stop calling in a fadlet. I don't know if anyone calls it a fadlet anymore. No, did they? Walt calls it a fadlet still. My dad calls it a famblet. Hey.

It's okay. But we're moving out of that generation. We're moving through, right? We're going to get better. All right, all right, all right. So you've conceded that VR is the incorrect way, but you think people will keep saying it. I think our job to say it's the correct way. I think a good way to make it seem as though you want an argument is to begin a sentence with.

So you've conceded. Can I bring up a point? Because you haven't won this argument But it feels like you have What is that trick? For the radio listener, Tom just smugly drank His beer at me I'm just going to say drones

Drones It's the same thing What do you mean? Well, people call drones They say it's a drone It's not a drone, it's a radio-controlled It means it's becoming a drone though They are becoming drones, like they follow themselves now

But the first one People call them autonomous drones Which is like redundant or whatever I think what we can all agree on is that we are huge nerds who care about the names of things. But they call it drone racing. They do, but they're controlled. Yeah, but they're still flying themselves to an enormous degree.

Like, I've flown a drone, like a Phantom 3. Like, if you just gave me a quadcopter and you're like, control all four rotors and hold it in space, I'd like, well, that crashed. I've killed many people. Like, you know, like, I'm sorry. I'm a murderer now. But it still has the same thing that people say, well, it's drones and it just covers everything.

and people aren't saying, well, this bit has got... Right, and it's our jobs to argue for the right. But why? Everybody calls it a driver. All right, I'm stopping this. I'm stopping this because you're losing. Zach Khan has asked me, if I wanted to do a 360 video in the next month for a personal project,

what three things should I know going into it? That's good. Know that you're not going to get the same resolution that you're used to getting in 2D. Yeah. Especially if you're getting consumer-grade cameras. There's a lot of great ones out there that make stitching very easy. I think the theta's,

pretty great. I think the theta is like the clear in a way like best one right. Yeah. Get a theta. Yeah. Yeah. Um, it, yeah, I mean, between actually being able to shoot with it and the software they put in to stitch it for you, like, it is by far the best way to do it. But know that like you're not going to get, it's going to say 1080P. It's going to even say 4K and you're going to think, oh, I'm going to get a 4K camera and you're not. Like that's a, that's a, that's a 4K image stretched much bigger than the same frame size you're using. Yeah. I mean, I think, um, I was talking to, Because we put up on Facebook.

And by the way, when I say everything's first generation, like Tom had to like pull blood from a stone to like get these platforms to actually work with the video because they, everything is new. It's, you know, struggling to find what is high quality enough that we're happy with it, but we'll play back smoothly. Right. So like finding that middle point where everyone's happy about that is, is still a challenge.

There was one moment, I think, when like every computer in this office was rendering a slightly different set of... Like, everything was like, what about this random collection of settings? And I was at South by just on the phone being like, I can't render anything here. I'm actually... I've rendered this beer into my mouth.

I asked. I was like, do you have a computer? How long did it take to render? I mean, Miriam just let out the PTSD laugh. She's like, so I would say at the end of it, if we were to try to export a full version of what the After Effects file

was it would be about a seven-hour render. I would say we chunked it out. I think the last time we explored most of them, I think we have three different chunks of when we exported. And then putting that into Premiere, that needed to be exported. And then converted. And then converted.

So it's an hour and a half probably of an export out of Premiere, and then an hour conversion to an MP4. And all that's assuming I didn't screw anything up, which I did a lot. And so did I. But more so. I more broke the project and had to make Miriam go and clean it up. Oh, that's awful.

But it came out. 3DR makes drones. We've been there. They're cool. Do you know 3DR, America's largest drone maker? Their solo smart drone is the first drone optimized for your GoPro, so you can get live HD video straight to your mobile screen and full control of the camera from the ground. 3DR made solo smart because flying has gotten easy, but getting cinematic shots still takes a lot of practice.

So Solo has an extra onboard computer that turns practice time into software. It works like your automatic personal camera crew, the Hollywood toolkit at your fingertips, Tom. This drone's putting you out of business. I am very aware of this drone. The solo drone is basically an aerial motion control rig in a backpack. Smart shots guide both the drone and a camera to automatically capture smooth and cinematic shots that not even pro-cinema pilots can get. So take that pro-cinema pilots.

You're out of work now. You know who one of those pallets is? Who's that? West Real. Really? Yeah. Just put up a good. A good freelancer that we've used for Verge videos in the past.

A lot of our drone operators has come from him. Yeah. Just did some of the 3DR. Shot something at a... I don't know, there was snow. So it was really like... Something beautiful. It was beautiful.

I watched half of it and was like, I can't watch it anymore. It's too good. Well, this is an ad for both 3DR and our friend West Real. Look at West Real if you're living for... It's only too bad that the solo drone will eventually put them on a business. Because it's so good because of its cable cam for shooting a story with multiple frames or its orbit feature for wrap around circles and towering, mind-blowing spirals at no other drone.

or pilot Wes can imitate. Just tell solo where to go push play and solo does it all. It even follows you. 3DR gives a solo away every month to one of their email subscribers. So sign up today to learn more about drones at 3DR.com slash verge. We're going to have to have Wes on the show. Yeah. This thing eventually ruins his life.

The robots are coming for all of us. So let's talk about watching it. So here, this is actually really funny. So GalaxyS7, MicroSD slot. I was able to just like grab an MP4 from you guys. Dieter figured like put it on a thing, figured out how to get in the Oculus viewer. So I had it on an S7 in a gear VR headset.

I was at a bar basically Saturday in South by Southwest. People were rolling through the bar. A lot of people we knew. And I just kept putting people on the headset. And the most interesting thing that I found was if you hand somebody a 10-minute video on a phone at a bar, it was like a good party. It was like fun. And you're like, watch this 10-minute video.

They're just going to, like, hate you. Right? They're like, no, I'm not too. Like, send me a link, and then I won't watch it later, right? I put people in the headset, and they just sat in there for 10 minutes. I ran the gear VR for so long that the S7 overheated and died. Wow. And by the time Emily Yoshita got there, I was like, try this out, and it was dead.

Like, you just wouldn't go anymore. I was, like, charging it. I had a battery pack. Like, people just want it. There was a line to watch it. So one day in the future, we're just going to show up to bars, and everyone's going to be in a headset. Dieter to this thing.

Are we together or are we alone? Like, if we're in a room together, we're both wearing headsets, like, are we together? Yes, we're together. Why? Because we're both experiencing VR together. But we're in different realities. But what it's fine?

That's a whole new reality on top of that, right? I mean, isn't that what life is like anyway? It's beer. Whoa, Miriam. Did you say, so you only got the one day of sleep? That's true. I do experience a different reality than most people all the time.

But I'm on drugs. So that's what drugs are like. I think that's what we're getting to. Anyway, so what I found was just watching the fact that you can put somebody in a different world. And, you know, I think our content was like, great. It was like, it was a great thing. It was like really interesting with the animation. But then I would be like, watch the Blue Angels.

And you'd put them in the Blue Angels. And that was like a totally different thing. And they were just like, watch that whole thing too. And I came to realize that, A, there's no notifications and B, you can't look at your phone. So, like, you're just, like, trapped in this space. And you have to pay attention. and I started asking people about it and they're like, yeah, I just wanted to pay attention.

Like I wanted to, I was just there and I wanted to just stay there for as long as I could. But you guys have been demoing it in the Vive upstairs, which is much better headset than the Gear VR. What's been your sort of takeaway? I mean, the most interesting thing for me is like you always have that awkward moment when you show someone your work,

like when you make films or make video, of like having them watch it and then you also watching it, but also kind of watching them. Yeah. And like looking at their eyes and looking at their facial expressions. and the great thing about any of you are a headset

is it takes away their eyes and you can just look at their mouth and look at how they're reacting and it's like you're like you can't really see what they're seeing you can't really know what they're reacting to but you get to just see them emote and you're like it's a really interesting way

to get feedback from people I did we were in there and I put the actual vibe on and said I'm going to watch the whole thing and it's a completely different experience yeah it's just you're wrapped in it and it's the fact that you can move that fast. And that's virtual reality.

Yeah. It's like having a... Because he's in virtual reality. That's fine. He's watching a 360 video in virtual reality. We're done. Spirical video.

Spirical. The first is over. Fantastic. Tom just dropped the mic. All right. Okay. Was you learn anything Maryam while you watch it?

Because you've been like, I mean, you have a spherical video community. I suppose, yeah. I haven't actually watched it all the way through in a headset, though. Really?

Yeah. I don't know if I have I learned. I've watched like chunks of it and like each bit of the animation that I wanted. I would watch it and I would give it to someone who hadn't seen it to see if they like followed their head the way that I wanted them to. But I haven't actually watched the way through. You probably should do that.

Well, it's honestly though because it's like it's a really bad way to QC it. Right. Because chances are you miss something. Right. Right. That's what I found myself just watching it over and over again and looking in some different space. Like whether that's behind me or to the sides or in front of me. We mostly locked Trey in a room and just made them watch a bunch of coverage.

That's why Trey is crazy now. That's why Trey is so excited to talk to other people right now. Well, so then the other thing I want to talk about is it's kind of the resolution piece, which is what Tom was saying earlier. So we were talking like a Facebook product manager, you know, as we were like setting up, putting on Facebook. And he's like, you know, this is going to drive the next great cycle of hardware innovation in phones.

Because if you think about the gear VR, it's not doing anything terribly complicated, right? It cuts the S7 screen in half and it projects a warped right eye and a warped left eye, and it, like, put lenses. It's, like, very simple what it's doing. I think it's a game-changing product. Like, having that thing, I mean, I'm the, I'm the douchebag who flew to South by Southwest with a VR headset in my backpack.

I don't call you a douchebag. I know. But you've called me other names, and I appreciate it. But not for, not having a Samsung, I would have one. I mean, everyone else had in there. But, like, I was on the plane. I was like, am I going to wear a VR headset in the plane?

And I really, like, I had a moment where I was like, I can't do this. Really? I couldn't do it? I didn't do it? I didn't do it. I'm doing it next time. I just couldn't.

Let's break and have a support group for this. Because you should have done. Whoa. Okay. Wait. Wait. I was trying to make this really common. No, you should have.

I should have. I'm sad that I didn't. But if I wasn't a plane that wasn't a plane to Southby, because like the last thing I wanted was like, because South by is like all people tweeting about being a plane the whole time they're on a plane. And I might just pull it out. So, okay. There have been a thousand tweets and like a Gawker article about me.

This brings up another. Who wants to be a meme? This brings up another. VR problem that we have, which is VR selfies. Which is a thing we've been doing. Non-stop. Problem. These are a gift.

Exactly. Why would you call that a problem? To explain this. Phones loaded with them. To explain this, something that's been happening around our office, especially. Whenever someone gets into a VR headset for an extended period of time, everyone tries to take a selfie with them. And it's a little bit of a creeper, like, environment where there's no safe space for VR.

Right. We need to have, like, a safe, like, no VR selfie. We need to close that door more often. People come running in from other rooms to stand behind you and take a selfie. No joke. You're funny every time. Every time. But I'm worried that we're setting a precedent that cannot be sustained.

Nah, it'd be fine. It's great. Never stop. I mean, I've been playing a game where I try to get as physically close to Dieter and Chris Grant as I can when I're in that. I don't win that game a while. It's really easy to tell even when you're in a different reality that someone's, like, breathing on you. It's super creepy. just super creepy

especially when Grant is like hey buddy anyway what was I saying oh phone innovation so it's like we have 4K screens

down phones but nobody knows why because you can't see it but the second you start thinking about cutting the phone screen in half like you do need a 4K screen that's a great reason I have a 4K screen and even the vibe which I think is the highest quality headset

it's pretty grainy in there right and like the gear VR VR is like just a low resolution environment. And then you need way more bandwidth. Like on an LTE connections, like even doing YouTube 360 is like real bad. So like that's a great reason to have faster Wi-Fi and 5G networks. And they need faster processors. The reason S-7 got so hot is because I was running a processor at max like for a day.

Well, I think it's because we'll even TV is right. We've talked about that 4K like do we really need AK? Yeah, because AK is something we really need. Yeah. But VR is that thing that drives that right? Right. That's the exciting thing for me is that we need screens that are smaller and better. Yeah. Faster now.

Now. Can we start it? Give us more. Yeah. No, I mean, it's weird because I think there's, we've talked about this a lot on this show, which is like, phones are boring, right? Like, they're pretty boring. I mean, literally we should, we need, I need to read another ad.

We need to talk about Apple for a couple seconds. But like, phones are boring. Apple's putting out a smaller phone. That's the most exciting thing they can do. Like, tiny phone. Apple needs to go. the VR train. Yeah, so. And that's worth talking about too, right? Like, a good reason to buy a Galaxy S7 in my mind, an excellent reason, and a reason that I think I might recommend people

do it is because the gear VR is like a life-altering experience. And it actually is, like, you put people in it for the first time and they freak out. Yeah. And really the barrier to entry is having an Android phone ready to run it, right? Yeah. And having the S-7 screen is fantastic and it's probably the best way to view it. Also, like the gear VR has had set so much more comfortable in the Vive. Yes, the Vive is really uncomfortable. Which feels like a freaking weight? Vipre. Drag it down your head. Sure. What? But it's not going to get, it's

whatever. It's the same thing, essentially. But it's like wearing, uh, it's like you're going to scuba diving. Yeah, it's just, and then the cable. But the vibe, like the straps, the one over the top of your head and the cable pack. The cable pack on the Vive is like you're, it's no joke. Like, it might as well just go into your like spine.

Like, yeah. It's huge. It's like, when you plug into headphones in the back, it really does look like that's seen in the Matrix. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. And you trip over it continues long. Or if you're in a spinny chair, you're just done. You're just tangled. It's awful. Well, we're getting Oculus soon, right? I think we're an Oculus soon. Because it's coming out soon. I'm going to get mine when I'm on vacation.

And it's the saddest thing in my life right now. So I'm still trying to... Does your wife know that you're bringing your Oculus with you? I can't. That's the thing I can't because I need my PC to run it and I can't bring my PC with me. Where are you going on vacation? Scotland. Scotland. What? Can you? Here's what I want you do. I want you to go to an internet cafe in Scotland and be like, do you

Like, do you have... No, it's coming the day I leave. There's no... I've definitely thought about this already. Like, it's getting delivered to the office April 1st, which is also probably not going to happen. Yeah.

And I'm leaving April 1st. There's no way. Does that mean I can play with it? Yes. Yes. Beautiful. Guys, March madness is almost underway. You're probably scrambling to figure out

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That's harries.com. Enter code verge. I'm going to spell it at the end. Okay. This is my enter code verge at checkout. That is H-A-R-R-Y-S. I thank you. All right, so Apple event.

Yes. It's happening. You guys are all big nerds. Tiny phone, tiny phone excite you? No. Over it. It's why. Yeah, over it.

I've not heard a, I've not heard a convincing argument, why. I think there's a lot of people who have iPhone. I think there's a lot of people that really, I mean, I want a smaller phone. I just don't want an iPhone. What do you have? You don't want to know?

I want to know what is. Like a really old Sony. Wow. Oh, people love that thing. That thing has a great camera. No. No? This is the Z3.

Oh, that thing didn't have a great kid. It's good because I can get caught in the rain on my bike and it won't die. The V stands for Verizon. It stands for Verizon branding on the front of the phone. It's awful. It's a god-awful phone. But it doesn't, you can't get wet. You should get an S-7.

You can get wet. It's true. I gave, I gave, I, so. When my contracts up. I gave Dieter my iPhone 5 earlier for whatever reason, and it just felt so freaking tiny. Yeah. Like it was just, I don't know how, how I did it. Just a little tiny.

phone. I can't imagine. What do you have now? You have a six. Yeah. Yeah. My favorite thing is other people's six pluses look huge to me and then mine is like, oh, this is the right size for a phone. And then I get on the subway, I'm like, what is that monster? What is that big stupid phone? What's that big stupid phone? Yeah. Tom, what do you have? Um, oh, what do I have? Yeah. You want to talk, we were moving off Apple now? No, what do you, not like what in your life? Like, what kind of phone do you have? Oh, I have six. He was six. Yeah. James has a six plus. Six plus. Yeah. Oh, yeah, he did. But on I'm I'm I this is the first time I've really been tempted to switch to the S7 yeah because the VR stuff the VR stuff that's a huge thing and also just like the screen is really nice

and the camera's amazing James actually when's your camera shootout going should out going tomorrow I think didn't it go up today I'm not sure we did a 6s versus S7 camera shootout but if it's going tomorrow we can talk about it yeah you basically found that the S7 camera did better than the six S oh I mean down the line down I mean hands down yeah but and it was and it was wasn't that big of an improvement from the S6, the camera. But the focus is so much faster that it's like, oh yeah, no, yeah, using it, but like resolution and and the, and changing anything on it, it's a lot simpler.

I got, but I've forgotten how confused I am about how to change any settings on an iPhone. Yeah, changing photography. Changing, like, the speed at which, like, your frame rate for shooting slow motion in the iPhone is the worst. Yeah, because you can bounce to another app, right? It's the worst thing. You have to go down. Oh, my God.

You're going down into settings and then find. Yeah. Yeah. So you leave the camera. You have to go into settings and then you can change it there. And 4K is enabled by default. And I'm pretty sure they don't want people to accidentally shoot 4K because it's the highest one because it will destroy the storage in your 16 gig iPhone.

Oh, right. So they buried the setting. That is incredibly depressing. I'm sorry. The other crazy thing about the Samsung. Mary, I'm sorry, everybody. Harries.com slash the bridge. Yes.

H-A-R-R-Y-S.com. Dot com. The other thing with the Samsung is they're at here. I just think they got the best bargain. for an ad ever. Yeah. I was going back to the Samsung is the one thing I've never gone with those phones is I just cannot handle Samsung's software.

Yeah. And the camera app is remarkably simple and straightforward. So whoever that sort of rebellious team were, they've done something very simple. So here's the flip side of it, which is, James, you are the only person I know who uses an iPad Pro all day, every day. Yeah. Like James has his laptop set up in front of him, and then he's got his iPad Pro stuck up on the case and you're just like uses both all day long but it's incredible it's well I have to say it's

I've used it we did the feature case in use and used in the feature drew that drew the whole thing on that it's amazing yeah because you can draw freehand in vectors and things it's it's just amazing because you can draw you just hit you go straight out of the adobe thing straight did you retouch any of the first lady photos on the iPad that wouldn't work why not because I mean Apple would definitely It's actually really, where it probably, you probably could, but the problem is it's weird. Retouching a picture when you're actually drawing on the picture is really hard. Really?

It's much easier to use a tablet and just look at what you're doing. I don't know why. Huh. You mean you must eat a keyboard and look at what you're doing. Well, covering it up. No, he's a whack-on tablet down below, so you're not actually drawing on the original tablets. Oh, the original tablets.

I thought you meant like I'm using my random iPad over here and like, what's happening over there? Really? Yeah. It's very strange. I mean, Wack or make tablets that you can draw on and illustrators like it, but for retouching, I just can't do it because you're doing a lot of keystrokes all the time, and then that whole thing of using a pen to tap

keystrokes plus do the retouching, it's just way too slow. Yeah. So are you excited about a tiny iPad pro? I kind of got used to the new one now. Yeah. I mean, and honestly, if you're drawing on it, the size is useful. Right. So if you were up, you haven't, I bet you have an error. I'm assuming you do. I do, but I don't.

Do you upgrade your hair to the pro, the tiny pro? I think if I haven't... That's what they're going to call it, the iPad Tiny Pro. The iPad Tiny Pro. It's a good. Tiny Pro. I'm using the iPad Pro Pro. There's many good tiny bro jokes there.

The iPad Tiny Pro. It's like some guy in a coffee shop, just like drawing. Double pop color. Hey girl. I'm just drawn on my iPad. I don't know how any of that works anymore. But I'll tell you something. I'm not using that.

Is that what cool guys do to pick up chicks? That's how we do. You're married. I've been married for 40 years. You heard it here. That's how we do it. We married guys go to coffee shops with their tiny pros. Trying to pick up side pieces with their iPad.

Do you remember when we're coming back from this? No, that's seriously, guys. Is that a joke? Is that working? Nope. Nope. No. No.

No. No. The iPad sidepiece is not a thing. But do you remember when we, after the floater shoot, we were in the train station, and we were watching that guy with the big iPad pro set up with his keyboard, and all he was doing was swiping back between the screens onto the, different apps and just opening them closing them randomly. Yeah, no, literally at we were like in the train station and I was like James that guy is just switching apps. He's not doing anything. No.

He's just enjoying the size of the screen. He's like, what does this app look like? It's huge. What about this app? Also enormous. Like he was so happy. It was just like, what are you doing? You have to make yourself happy with your purchasing decision somehow. You ever just buy something just like look at it for a while? It's like a thing that I do. I don't have a lot to do professionally. I like to purchase things and gaze at them. So, I don't know, Apple doing tiny stuff.

I mean, that's like, that's their vibe. Well, who are they targeting? Who knows? What's the demo here? I had this long conversation. People with regular sized hands. Yeah. No, I think there's a lot of people who had fives and they like iPhone fives.

Right? Like, there's, if you haven't, people, there's a lot of people of iPhone fives who haven't upgraded. there's a lot of people with the iPhone 5S, there's a tiny people, a surprising number of people with a 5C, like, why not just be like, you didn't upgrade because the phone got too big for you.

Here's a better version of the thing you have. And that's like a, pretty sure that that's, yeah, that's like a, that's a thing you can sell. I think the thing Apple is running into is they are traditionally the company that has like a very focused product line. They're like, this is the right size.

And for years is Samsung screens and everybody else's screens got bigger, They're like, no, no, no, no, that's stupid. Then they put out a phone with a big screen and they're sales skyrocketed. So now it feels like they have to walk back or they're making, I mean, they have more screen sizes than anybody right now. Like they're coming up on that point when they have like a Samsung number of screen sizes. They have like the watch. They have the iPad Mini 2.

The iPad Mini 2. The iPad Mini 4. iPad Mini 3 is like the, that's the kid we don't talk about anymore. Really fell off their iPad Mini 3. Should have gone to college like your brother. That's brutal. Cruel. Is it really that cruel? It's not in the family photo.

He just didn't make it for enough. Just never left the hometown. It's fine, though. Look, every town needs townies. Yeah. No. For all the kids out there who didn't go to college, it's okay. Yeah, you don't have to go to college.

I'd say you could be successful. Yeah. But you just, I bet Steve Johnson go to college. I've had many three. I'm just, but like, you know, he just, he's not in the family photo anymore. Oh, so something happened.

Yeah, some trauma. It's got bad for him. So the two minis, then the regular size iPad, the big iPad, now a smaller iPad Pro, than like the variety of screen sizes

of laptops, than like two sizes. Like, you could just make that chart that they used to make about Samsung, which is like all of Apple screen sizes, and they're like some small to enormous. And I think that is fine.

I actually think that's fine. I think computers should come in all shapes and sizes. But it's just, it's blow, their narrative a little bit because they're just like here's an event for tiny things phone body positivity I think that's what makes me not interest you know they're just they're just computers the computers don't need body positivity right like no one no one's shaming the

computer and it doesn't have feelings some serious phone size shaming I feel like yeah I mean like the people who have the small phones and people with the big phones are dumb vice versa yeah but that it's fine because those are just consumer choices and not like not your body that's not what Twitter that's My God, look at how small your phone is. That's just stuff you bought, I guess. I don't know. I feel like that's part of the reason I'm not interested in the event, as much as I would normally.

Like, once Apple, like, comes out and announces, like, a car or a actual VR headset. So the VR thing, they're missing VR. I think the two big things of the past few months that we've talked about endlessly are VR and the Echo. Yep. and Apple's just like And the VR is like really nascent Like I guess we've been talking about Everything is first generation

It's not their moment for VR Like Apple doesn't jump into it at this time They're gonna wait for the market to mature People don't know what they want They'll make a stylish headset It'd be great It'll only run on iTunes Hooray

Right They don't have a video distribution platform Right Google's gonna do VR And they've got YouTube and Can't even freaking watch 360 video on Safari You can't I know It's ridiculous Yeah you can't

Their browser doesn't support By the way, mobile web, you can't do 360 on the mobile web. Just like, you can, but you can't, right? You can't with the big players. There's open source software to do 360 on the mobile web. Yeah, but we tried a bunch of it and was like, okay. Can we talk about that for a second? I have live like a lot of thoughts.

Why Safari does not support that. I have so many friends who, and of course I put in email, I was like, hey, watch this video that we did. It's amazing, but you can't watch it in Safari, watch it in Firefox or Opera. Chrome. You mean the popular one. Yeah, right, right. Watch it in Opera.

It's like the meanest thing that you do. Anything other than Safari. And of course I still got replies of like, wow, cool panoramic video, bro. Just like, oh. But anyway, but Apple's just like not there. And it's fine. It might not be their moment. But Google has a huge video distribution platform.

Facebook is building a huge video distribution platform. Apple has iTunes. And like they're going to need to do something where people can upload and share 360 videos because that would be the bulk of the content for a long time. But what about the fact that all of these VR headsets are a bit runoff gaming PCs? I mean, I think the phone is the way it gets delivered, right? That's the app store, right? Yeah.

Like the thing you're talking about, like, how you distribute, like, all these, like, VR videos, it's the app store. Yeah. You download their app and that serves all the content. Right, which is, I think, where that mobile web thing comes in, right? Like, I think everybody, there's not a lot of development emphasis on plugins for the mobile web because people want you in their app. in their store.

Because it's the best way to watch it. They want to control the experience. Streaming is not a great way to watch it. Makes sense. It's annoying. Yeah, no, the web is dead and I mourn it every day. I wake up every day. I light a candle for the death of the open web.

Can I bring up a thing? Yeah. We have a lightning round. Oh, this is lightning round? It can be, yeah. Well, I have a thing that... Your thing is the first thing in lightning round. Oh, really?

Oh, great. Google. Lightning round. Yeah, go ahead. Do you make a lightning noise? But we didn't speak about her sound effects in the actual thing. We don't have to. Just demonstrate.

one. But that's you? That was, she recorded the sound effects for the video. That's you? Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

That's you? Say it again. Just completely fucking Eli up. Just back-headed. Wait, one of your, one of, like, Mary was like one of the most talented people who works here and then she can also make fucking computer sounds. Yes. That's unfair.

You haven't heard this around. You're behind her. I do nothing but this all day long. You just make computer sounds? Yeah. When you type, do you make the sound? sounds. What?

What? Why don't you do this all the time? She does. She does. She does. I'm not over at all and I run the joint. Neelai. She sits behind me next to you.

I'm busy. I'm tro and Dieter. I've got a whole thing going on. Well, now I'm just going to pay more attention. Damn it. Okay, make a lightning sound. Yeah. What?

Can we hang out all the time? God damn it. All right. Lightning around. Google selling Boston Dynamics. They're a robot company. And the story is crazy. Bloomberg, like Google employees were emailing back and forth

about how the latest Boston Dynamics video showing them like with humanoid robots and like pushing their robots. They were like, this raises questions we don't want to answer at Google. They got leaked to a public list serve. Google's like, screw it. They're going to sell. They're like, we don't want to be in this business.

It sounds like chaos. Which is sad. It makes me really sad. So sad. Well, honestly, because, like, the people that came out of, like, Amazon, like, I don't really want Amazon to buy it. It's, like, Google is at one company that, like, they have these weird projects that can go somewhere, can go nowhere.

But, like, I'm interested in the company funding, like, these, like, crazy new tech fields. Well, Toyota's also interested as well. Yeah, and it's, like, seeing it, like, Google doesn't feel like they have any, like, actual application for it, right? Right. Amazon, you feel like they'll develop a... The dog is going to come running out.

the street. By the way, that is literally, I think, in Snow Crash, right? With, like, the angry dog that, like, attacks. You guys know what I'm talking about? No idea. In Snow Crash the novel by Neil Stevenson, one of the main-ish themes is that they have, like, robot attack dogs

that, like, run around. That's what Amazon is going to build. But instead of attacking you and protecting you, they're going to, like, deliver your socks. Deliver paper towels. Like a robot St. Bernard with alcohol underdiction? Do we have... I would 100% get down with a robot. I would fuck with that.

Please, right now. Family show, although we even swear insults it. Anyway, you have a thing. So one of the big things that I have always thought about with them acquiring Boston Dynamics when it happened was that if you ever go on the global campus, they have all these bikes, these like different colored bikes that everyone rides around on.

And when we were shooting a feature out there last year about this time, Virgil Lime Manning and I were thinking, you know what, 10 years from now, all these bikes were replaced with big dogs. Oh my God. And sadly, that dream might die. It will. It's sad that it's over.

It's not over. The company's going to exist, but the dream of writing on the campus is dead. And that's what I'm... Maybe I'll re-buy it later. It seems like a Google thing. Okay. Next lightning around topic. Right.

SeaWorld no longer breeding orcas. Heck yeah. That was a layup for you. I did that one for you. Fantastic. Fantastic. Samsung put out a new convertible tablet PC called the tab pro s.

Any reaction from anyone. The tab pole. Okay. And then I've just put South by Southwest here, which I'm just giving like a mid thumbs up. I didn't get to look

at anything from South by. It was a boring show. I think the best thing that happened is Caitlin Tiffany, one of her features, or one of her reports was she tried to go to every event and make a true friend.

Yeah, that's the best thing came out of South West. Which is now, you can read that on the site. That's it. That was a show. We're a little bit over, a little bit over time,

but it was a good show. Thank you guys for coming. Thank you guys for working so hard for this video. Thank you, Miriam, for letting me know about the computer sounds. Place out, Miriam. God, so good. It's so good.

Anyway, we'll be back next week. Obviously, there's a big Apple event. We're covering a hell of that on Monday. It's tuning in The Verge. Deeter and Lauren are going this time. I'm hanging back. They're live vlogging and they're covering it. We're a video with hands-on.

We'll obviously have a Vergecast when Deer comes back with all the new stuff. That'll be very exciting. Hopefully it's more than just a tiny phone and tiny iPad, but what are you going to do? And then, if you're looking at and follow it, You can follow at Verge on Snapchat. We're Verge, Deer, and Lauren will be snapping from the event. You can hit us up on Instagram at Verge. We're now the biggest tech brand at Instagram, by the way.

Woo-hoo. Hala. Anyway, and then you can also, we have all these other shows. What's Tech comes out every Tuesday with Chris Plant. Control, delete, which I host about Mossburg. It comes out on, we record on Wednesday. It comes out on Thursdays. Virg ESP hits every Friday with Emily, Shita and Liz Zapato.

And then Lauren Good has too embarrassed to ask over on the Recode network, which is also one of the first. And all that is available at iTunes.com slash The Verge. These find people, their work is available on YouTube and the Facebook. On YouTube. It's just YouTube.com slash the verge. The verge. On Facebook.

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